


Degrees of separation

by Captain_Repression



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Venom (Movie 2018)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-02-09 11:24:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18637159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Repression/pseuds/Captain_Repression
Summary: The Venom symbiote doesn't know Thanos is to blame for Eddie's sudden disappearance, but they intend to find out what happened, and fix it immediately.That means jumping from host to less than ideal host through a difficult and dangerous quest, each time having to manage the abilities and whims of entirely different partners. They don't lose hope, but they might lose patience...





	1. Starbucks

**Author's Note:**

> I saw multiple fics where V is dusted by Thanos, but not nearly as many where Eddie gets it. Here I come to restore the cosmic balance. Each host swap corresponds to one chapter. I actually don't know the exact ending at this point, I'll watch Endgame and then adapt it to be at least canon-adjacent. I expect it'll still be off-canon, but I'll live with it, this is for fun.

 

There was such a thing as dank alley etiquette. The stereotype went that you met shady types in alleys, but to tell the truth, most of the people you met there were either homeless people looking for a bit of quiet, or fellow pedestrians taking a shortcut. Even when you met criminals, the majority of them wouldn't mug you; they'd be small time dealers, waiting for their customers with no desire to attract attention by involving innocents. They wouldn't be happy to see you come close, but they'd just frown and wait until you went away.

Now, the setting was still uncomfortable. Alleys were often worrisomely narrow and shadowy, the sun never shining all the way to the ground left it always damp, and any trash left on it rotted in a specially smelly way. And there  _was_ trash. The wind would blow papers and bags around until they reached those spots where the air was too still to pick them up again, people would see the piles of trash and just drop their own there if the street didn't have a public bin, and of course the tenants of the buildings framing the alley would leave their garbage out there until collection day. Crates, pallets, building materials and other bulky objects not too tempting to steal would often be stored there, creating a hiding spot rich environment. The safest little dank alley could still make the bravest trespasser nervous.

So it was the job of a big guy like Eddie not to walk too close or stare too insistingly at the smaller woman coming from the opposite end. Brief eye contact, little acknowledgment nod, say hi if they seem to expect it, then gaze forward and walk past. You could seriously spook people, if you weren't careful.

 

Invisible, but always there, Eddie's companion was paying attention to his careful body language management. Every species had aggression versus appeasement signals, but only a few would use the latter to comfort the weak, instead of avoiding a losing fight. Humans were interesting like that. Now, appeasement wasn't exactly Venom's style. They enjoyed being their large scary selves, and watching bystanders struggle between fright and curiosity at their presence was an undying source of amusement. To tell the truth, their best course of action when wanting to look unthreatening was to stay hidden and let Eddie handle it. The man was good at looking harmless; this might not sound like high praise, but they did appreciate a skill they definitely didn't share.

The stranger passed, they set out to resume their conversation. Single cell thick strands, their ends wrapped around synapses, started firing up their chemical pulses again. But something went wrong. The neurotransmitters only leaked out, failing to bring words to life within the brain. Had they slipped, somehow? The alien tightened their synaptic connexions, but still couldn't get a tight bond. The still living neurons shriveled up, slipping out of their grasp again. They couldn't feel Eddie's mind, only the bitterness of inexplicably dying cells' cytokines.

They reached deeper, looking for surviving tissue, but life slipped away faster than they could chase it. Soon, their tendrils only found one another, grasping through a matter that was losing all organic flavour and taking the alkaline bite of ashes. They briefly kept the shape of their bond, fine tendrils branching into each organ like a black cast of a human circulatory system, but without support, gravity soon won, and they splashed onto the pavement, formless, confused, and distressed.

 

Eddie?

 

 

The sight wasn't prettier from the outside. Darline was only a few feet away when she heard the stranger gasp. She turned around to see him clutching his chest, panting, and the urges to help him and to run away fought inside her. To her embarrassment, neither won, and she pathetically froze while the man collapsed. He didn't fall to his knees nor flop all the way onto his face, he literally broke apart, dust detaching from him, leaving a dark, liquid core that was certainly not what human entrails were meant to look like, which rained down on the ground. A slimy looking puddle was all there was left of him. She was no doctor, but was certain no disease could do that!

It was her turn to gasp when the puddle began stretching a pseudopod in her direction, much faster than it could have by merely trickling down the weak slope. She stepped out of its way, and pulled her cellphone out of her pocket to dial 9-1-1.

While it rang, she saw the ooze had moved in her direction, this time going against the slope, and had almost reached her foot. She kicked at it reflectively, which turned out not to be effective, as it stuck to her leg and began wrapping around it. She dropped her phone and screamed, trying to shake the thing off her body. A man had just died from some horrible liquefying disease in front of her eyes, and now she was going to be infected and die too!

What little parts of her mind had not given in to panic yet advised her to stay in the alley. Pick up the phone, call an ambulance, tell them about the mystery disease, don't pass it on to innocent people who couldn't do anything if she ran at them crying for help anyway.

She was sitting on an emergency exit's steps, crying softly, when a vision struck her. She relived the previous scene, the stranger's unlikely demise, with an unusual precision, down to details her brain should have dismissed, like how her clothes shifted on her body as she moved, or the exact traffic sounds that came at the moment, as if someone had found her mind's rewind button and was replaying the whole content of her short term memory. Is this how trauma works?

“ **What happened?** ”

“I don't know, I'm not sure! There was this man, and he looked sick all at once, and...”

“ **I know that! But what happened? Where is Eddie?** ”

She realised those weren't the questions the 9-1-1 operator should be asking. In fact, the phone was still ringing, no one had picked it up. Was hallucinating part of the trauma, or part of the disease?

“ **I am not a disease. I would never hurt Eddie. But he is gone! Where is he?** ”

“That...” she pointed at the empty area where the man had last stood “that's Eddie? I don't know, I think he's dead!”

Something contracted inside her, not like any cramp she ever had but just as painful, and she felt a wave of anger, barely riding on top of terror and sadness. That was it, she had gone mad. The thing calmed down, or at least, stopped hurting her.

“ **Humans don't just disappear. We must find out what happened, and bring him back. Lets call Dan, he's a doctor, he'll know what to do.** ”

She didn't know any Dan, but the voice seemed confident about his ability to help, so she indulged it and ended the fruitless 9-1-1 call. Before she did anything else, her hand moved on its own and scrolled through her address book.

“ **Why isn't Dan's contact here? Is he gone too?** ”

“I don't know him, why should he be in my phone? Did you use my hand just like that? Who even are you?”

 

Venom was in no mood to make small talk, understandably. They knew that taking a host by force was bad manners, to say the least, but they were helpless without once, and this was not a situation where helplessness was any tolerable. It was not a bad host. A healthy body, a generally cooperative personality, enough smarts and knowledge to work with, and not so poorly compatible that they couldn't use those assets without damaging them. A few minute's use should have been enough to take Eddie out of whatever dumb situation he'd gotten himself into.

But the human's perspective only confirmed the most paranoid interpretation of their sudden separation. Eddie was gone. They were not ready to believe he was dead, though, if only because their natural inclination to action rejected the possibility that nothing could be done. But it would obviously take more time than a mere physical rescue, they already pictured having to hop hosts like their former captain had done through a complicated and dangerous quest.

But unlike Riot, they were adverse to harming hosts, and hijacking their body for more than a few minutes would hurt them. They'd have to talk them into helping, and ugh! they were NOT feeling social right now. To make things worse, they had just embarrassed themselves assuming that, if Eddie always taken finding his friends' number in his phone fir granted, they'd just find them in any phone. Talk about first impressions! The human half thought they were an infectious disease, half thought they were an idiot. Well, time to begin fixing that:

“ **Sorry for the intrusion. My name is...** ”

Venom stopped themselves suddenly. If they were trying to convince someone that they were not some illness causing substance, telling them their name might not be the wisest plan. Quick, they tried to think of another name, and their attention stopped onto one of the discarded cups rolling in the breeze.

“ **Starbucks. My name is Starbucks. I need your help.** ”

 

Darline felt her tension drop suddenly. She still had no idea what had gotten into her, but the clumsily improvised lie told her that whatever else it was, it was a dumbass.

“Okay, _Starbucks_ , I just saw a man die. You think you can save him anyway? I'll go along if you have a plan that makes any sense, I'm not letting a life be ended if I can help it. I'll look up your friend's phone number, to start. It's Dan who?”

The directory didn't have Dan's number, but it did have Anne's, a lawyer he was living with.

“So what do I tell her? I have a hunch that 'Starbucks wants to talk' won't do.”

“ **Just bear with me a minute.** ”

She was actually more surprised when her visitor took control of her arm this time, to dial the number and hold the phone up to her ear. Now that the horror from Eddie's disappearance wasn't as vivid in her mind, she could think more clearly, and became more aware of the utter weirdness of it. No one picked up the phone, this was becoming a pattern, but she heard her own voice leave a message:

“Anne, this is Venom. Something happened to Eddie, something bad. We'll fix this, but we don't know how yet, we could use you and Dan's help. Please call back.”

Darline felt that her body was under her control again. She ended the call and tucked the phone safely away.

“Venom? Why the hell would you bother with a fake name if you'll let the real one slip five minutes later? And why did you think something obviously made up would sound better than, I don't know, a name everybody around here knows?”

“ **We're not that well known, we kept a low profile.** ”

“YOU DID NOT!”

She shouted that. Many unbelievable things had happened today, but that the local monster/superhero could believe one second that they went unnoticed topped them all.

“You show up in public, you let anyone film you, you even pose for them sometimes, you could run for president and wouldn't be any less low profile!” She caught her breath a few seconds. “So I guess it's true that when you disappear you're hiding in a regular guy. Are the other rumors true? Do you eat bad guys and do strange sexual things?”

“ **We do eat bad guys. We don't do as many sexual things as you're thinking of.** ”

“Well you're not doing any of this around me!”

“ **We'll need to eat, but regular food will do... for a while. I hope you have lunch money, we have a very fast metabolism.** ”

“Can you feed off fat then? I could use to lose a few kilos... Kidding, I'm not trusting an alien with an Extreme Makeover deal.”

She actually laughed at a thought, which she didn't wait to voice:

“Mom will be so jealous when she learns I've hanged out with a celebrity all day!”

“ **She may object to having one in your body, though.** ”

“She wants Harrison Ford inside her, she's in no place to judge.”

“ **He is a human he doesn't have the ability to... oh you're talking about sex again.** ”

By now, Darline felt confident enough that she was not infected with a new plague to exit the alley and mingle with the crowd again. To her surprise, there was no crowd, but when it went it left chaos behind. The usual traffic had turned into a tangle, cars only moderately damaged by the low speed collisions, but intricately crowded together into immovable trails of sheet metal and polymer. Most passengers had left, but some were stuck behind jammed doors. A small building was burning on the left, a fire truck was failing to find a way through the traffic on the right. People walked around, some helping others out of crashed cars, some using their phones, many just crying helplessly. She stopped one of those.

“What happened to all the cars? Where's everyone? Why is this building on fire?”

The teenager she selected needed a minute to answer, uncontrollable sobs breaking her first attempts.

“We were going to McDonald's and then Jess started crying and then she was... she like... turned into dust, and she's dead! And... lots of people, I was just looking at Jess but the others too... And then the cars started crashing because drivers were dead too. And everybody's freaking out and nobody can tell me what happened. Jess is my baby sister, what am I going to tell mom?”

Darline hugged the young girl, for whatever comfort it could bring.

“Go home for now. The roads aren't safe today. They'll tell what's going on when they know, so watch the TV and do what they say, ok?”

The girl clung to her a bit longer, then took her advice and headed home. Darline took in the scene of devastation around her. She had first aid training, but this looked more than she could handle. Even the firefighters were pretty useless, their gear trapped behind the accident, and they were trained for crises! A sense of helplessness was beginning to take hold of her heart.

The now familiar voice intruded in her thoughts:

“ **You're not familiar with the concept of symbiosis, are you?** ”

“Please, I'm a botanist, I hold nitrogen fixers and mycorhizes close to obsession level.”

“ **Good. Then you'll understand I'm not just feeding off your nutrients in here? I have things to share too. Powers. Want to let that man out of that wedged car over there? Go on, rip that car roof out.** ”

At this point she wasn't going to disbelieve it. She walked over the tangle of vehicles to reach the victim in question. The man didn't look badly injured, but did look dazed, maybe concussed, and just stared ahead with a puzzled frown. The sun was beginning to heat up the stalled cars, and those who couldn't open or break a window were probably starting to feel it. It took some climbing, but she reached the target. Her fingers only found poor handholds at the windshield's edge, but her effort to grasp it was rewarded with the crunch of breaking glass as her fingers poked right through it, sheet metal crumpled in her fists, detached from its mountings, yielded like cardboard. She felt the strain in her muscles, but they weren't pulling alone, she had help. Soon, the roof was flipped entirely off, and she was undoing the man's seatbelt.

“We could have pulled the windshield off without destroying the whole car,” she remarked.

“ **There is such a thing as style.** ”

The alien had a point: their feat had been noticed, and a group of bystanders was walking to meet them. A tall man took the victim off her hands and helped him sit down, someone else crouched next to him; they were willing to take over his immediate care. The others crowded around Darline, clinging to the sliver of hope a hero's appearance always carried. They did have a lot of help to ask for, but among the mixed pleadings, she understood that children from the burning block had not showed up, and it was impossible to tell whether they had disappeared too, or were trapped by the fire.

“Lets save them!”

She started running towards the blaze.

“ **We can't do that.** ”

She didn't slow. Give a human near unlimited power, and they think they can just do anything!

“ **We have no power against fire, it'll hurt us worse than it'd hurt you alone.** ”

“Then I'll go in alone.”

“ **This is irrational. The others didn't go in for a reason.** ”

She had reached the wall now. The whole second floor was burning, and smoke came out of the third's windows. Any trapped survivor would be on the third. Anyone on the first would have left on their own, and anyone left on the second could only be dead.

“Help me reach the third floor, then hide inside and I'll do the rest.”

She ignored their protests and tried to will the powers to come to her. If the creature was able to use her arm and her voice to make a phonecall without her participation, there surely was a way for this to work in the other direction. She had seen videos of Venom in action, she knew what they could do. A battle of willpower took place in her head, and the host was winning this round: black ooze extruded from her hands, reluctantly coiling around her fingers, growing denser around the tips to form strong, sharp claws, that dug soundly into the brick of the wall.

She climbed awkwardly, but she did climb, most likely to her death; to both their death.

“ **Listen, I have a better plan. One where we don't die.** ”

She didn't listen. But just like she was forcing the symbiote to help her grasp the masonry, they forced her muscles to spasm and throw her off balance. She fell gracelessly, but they made sure the landing didn't hurt.

“ **You'll have to trust me. To trust us. We can't use our full power while I stay hidden, so... are you ready for an alien Extreme Makeover?** ”

She had seen _that_ in action too, and if the prospect of dying in a fire hadn't frozen her with fear, that did. She croaked a few unintelligible syllables and did the sign of the cross. No, no she wasn't ready for that!

But... she had run into danger the moment she felt like she could handle it, and now people relied on her, and maybe the only way not to fail them was to

let

that

happen.

“Fine! Do your thing!”

She covered her eyes and tried hard to believe it would be alright.

 

The human couldn't panic, not when the other's sensations dominated. Now things felt right, they were strong, they were unstoppable. They felt a familiar thrill as faces turned towards them, pale with fright. Backwards steps were taken. Venom turned towards them, mouth open in a sharp grin, legs bent into a predatory half crouch, as if ready to leap, claws displayed. But recognition took over fear in the many witnessing minds. Whimpers made way to cheers. This monster was on their side, things would finally go right. They wielded both fear and hope, delivered whichever they wanted. The host finally understood the alien's optimism: this was what power truly felt like, how could anything be impossible?

There was little time to bask in the crowd's admiration, though, so they got to work. The solution was obvious, now that it wasn't looked at by a woman who couldn't even lift a car over her head. The fire truck was just one block away, and it was a quick job to grab immobilised vehicles and move them out of the lane. A quick look inside: is it empty? Yes? On the pile it goes! In under two minutes, the fire truck was moving again, and actually qualified people got their suitable equipment close enough to carry a rescue efficiently. Venom helped deploy the gear at first: that truck had a staff of four, but one was gone; rescuers had not been spared by the ambient disaster. But soon they had the situation under control, and it just wasn't a superhero's job anymore.

A firefighter found a moment to thank them, but hesitated to call them by name: they did look different with a different host. Smaller, for one thing, and definitely more feminine, though still heavy set. Being asked if there were two of them amused them: there were always two of them. But this wasn't what the question meant, and they had a funnier response than playing dumb:

“ **Yes, we are... Starbucks.** ”

They walked away. A few shocked civilians had snapped out of their trauma induced daze and pulled out their phone to film the scene. Venom deliberately swaggered almost straight at one of them on their way out, letting their tongue hang out of their mouth and drip sticky drool on their path, eyes focused on the device's lens. The woman had accused them of posing for indiscreet cameras, well... how could they be blamed? If the monster's image was going to be shared all over the Internet, you better believe it'd be a handsome monster.

They turned into a backstreet to get out of sight and seeped back into their host. The expended energy made them hungry, but it could still wait a little. They could sense the anxiety spilling over from Darline's mind, that probably needed addressing right now.

“How large is the affected area, you think? I live just one mile from here, I have three kids, could any of them have disappeared too?”

“ **If they did, we will bring them back too.** ”

She pulled her phone out again. The Facebook app flashed her multiple notifications. A good place to start.

 

**Facebook Safety Check**

|►

The Snap

Today

 **13** friends are marked safe

 **45** friends are not marked safe yet

 

She expanded the list. Only her oldest kid was on it, but that meant nothing, the other two were too young to have their own Facebook. Her mom wasn't, and she was a social media addict, that was a bigger concern. Her old professor Edmond was on it, and an unkind thought made her feel like a 97 years old man being spared over someone who had all life ahead of them was just unfair.

She called her mother first, but no one answered. Heart pounding, she called her daughter next. For a change, someone answered:

“Mom?”

“Renee! Thank God you're safe! Where are your brothers?”

“I don't know, they were playing outside but I can't see them. What happened mom? The TV is talking about people missing everywhere. Are you coming home? It's scary!”

“Yes, I'm coming right now! Stay home, I'll look for the boys.”

 

She started walking, browsing official announcements describing what little was known about the disaster so far. The government, army, FEMA, United Nations, even the Avengers had their word to say about it, but no one sounded like a solution was coming any time soon.

“ **Avengers. Eddie scoffs at them, but this sounds like something they would be dealing with. Lets contact them.** ”

“I doubt they'll be taking civilian calls right now, they'll be too busy. But that professor I talked about? He used to work for NASA, I know they cooperate with Avengers in some of their operations, some of his contacts might be of use. He knows his way around.”

“ **Contacts are worthless when half of them are probably missing. Lets pick him up and go pay them a visit.** ”

Darline fell silent for a moment and clenched her jaw. This wouldn't do.

“Can you move into someone else? I have to go home. My family needs me. Whatever's left of it.”

That was a setback, and to tell the truth, Venom struggled to accept being pushed back, even if their rational mind told them moving on was the sensible option. They'd probably have to go through many hosts before finding Eddie again.

They agreed to check out anyone they met to at least leave the symbiote with someone both willing and capable of helping on the next stretch of road, moving on towards Darline's house. It wasn't, fortunately, too hard to find someone who was excited by the idea of wielding Venom's infamous powers, in exchange for a ride to the address she wrote down on a piece of cardboard. It was skinny man, probably in his thirties but aged by too many cigarettes, barely better dressed than Eddie. He snickered quietly when she asked for a moment to say goodbye, before parting with the alien, but let them have their quiet moment.

“Can you... wrap me up one last time before you leave?”

“ **Weren't you terrified the last time?** ”

“Last time went fine, didn't it? But I know you'll find a way to bring everyone back, you have to, don't you? That's how you'll get Eddie back, there's no way you'll let go, right? And when they're back, mom won't forgive me if I don't do one thing.”

They understood her intentions. They were silly, in a way, but they sprung from the same desperate hope they both clung to. She held out her camera and started filming in selfie mode.

“Mom, guess who I met today, you'll never believe it! Check this out! Say hello please!”

On cue, black goo emerged and wrapped her body, quickly forming Venom's figure. The camera shook a little during the shift, but stabilised after.

“ **Hello Miss Pointdujour, we saved lives today with your daughter. You should be proud and jealous.** ”

“That's overdoing it!” she protested as they were saving the video. To tell the truth, that fit exactly with the boasts she wasn't shameless enough to deliver herself.

“I guess this is where we say goodbye. I put my phone number on that note, keep me updated please!”

She faced she new volunteer host, who obviously thought the last selfie together was highly amusing, and couldn't hold back tears when she found herself alone again. She half walked, half ran the rest of the way home. It was harder to hang on to hope without the alien's frantic optimism rubbing off on her, but she still trusted them that if everything could be fixed, they'd do it. Until then, her children needed her. More than one, with a little luck.

 


	2. Bad Guy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a different host for each chapter, and along with them, a different tone and worldview. This one is both the most violent and darkest chapter. It's not very descriptive in those aspects, I wasn't trying to be edgy, but since even mentioning certain things can feel like it's heading in that direction, well I'll say it's not, it won't sink into shock value, next chapter will go in its own direction, not take this one's further.  
> So moderate content warning: there's mentions of abuse and one OC getting maimed and killed.

Settling into the new host only took a few minutes. Having had time to pick and choose, they had settled on one they could sense had a nicely matched chemistry, and given how he had reacted to the prospect of carrying them – of having powers, more specifically – his brain wouldn't be a source of resistance either. One of the first thing they felt when beginning to find the proper connexion pathways in his brain was impatience, actually.

“ **Hello, Allan.** ” They said as soon as they could send coherent words at him, hoping that picking up his name would sound more friendly than intrusive. Allan's heart accelerated, so although they couldn't perceive his answer immediately, they knew he heard. Encouraged, they persisted in twisting their tendrils around his axons, soon finding all the important spots. It wouldn't be a very intimate bond, but they only needed it for a short time after all.

They had to consume some of his blood sugar to work this fast; sharing their hunger was one thing no host was spared, and they were growing rather hungry. But they could wait yet a little more.

“ **You know where we need to go. So you just want to have some fun on the way? That's our deal?** ”

“I just said! Weren't you listening?”

“ **As a matter of fact no. Brains are complicated, I only could hear you for a few seconds now. What would be fun to you? We can run faster than you ever did, jump over these lanes of cars, climb over any building on our way, startle the hell out of people.** ”

“That's child's play!” Allan spat with disgust.

“ **Yes, play is how you call things you do to have fun.** ”

“I have better ideas, I'll just finish this first...”

On those words, Allan picked up a rock and threw it through a car's window, before reaching in and taking an abandoned purse.

“I was at home when all that happened,” he explained, “TV talked about the Snap. I thought: that's a lot of goods nobody owns anymore, I'll go help myself before somebody else does.”

“ **Allan, this is bad guy talk.** ”

Not a thought for the people who were gone, no worry for his own friends. All the man knew of right or wrong was whether he'd get away with it. Most of the  _bad guys_ Venom ate probably had this kind of mind, having one as a host felt dirty. They forced the fingers to part. The purse fell at Allan's feet.

“ **You have our powers, don't you want to use them for things you'll be proud of? Many people need help right now.** ”

“Reality check: you can't save everyone.”

“ **The whole point of being a superhero is that you can.** ”

Allan bent down and picked the purse again, rummaged through it and took a wallet and set of keys from it. He then discarded the bag. His pockets were full already, but he wouldn't keep an actual bag to carry his loot: to him, men weren't supposed to do that. The alien's hope of getting anything done with him was wearing thin. As he walked down the lane of stopped cars, peeking inside for interesting items, he went as far as to ignore a trapped dog, panting in the heat. Eddie would be so angry if he learned that they allowed a dog to die!

They didn't bother to ask: they wrapped his hand, protecting his knuckles, and forced him to punch through the window. The dog followed the cool draft and jumped out.

“ **See, good action, that easy.** ”

They had to actually stop the man from kicking the dog as it lingered around them before heading back to its home, hopefully to find somebody there. At least, it was easy to control this body. Allan had that particular weakness of sadists, who always preyed on smaller than themselves, and was unprepared to deal with actual resistance.

“You just created another stray, good job. Most of the time, you want to help, you just make things worse.”

“ **Just walk. Get us to that address. Can't wait to leave you behind.** ”

The symbiote felt less and less guilt at manipulating that  _bad guy_ , and while they didn't go as far as take control of his legs to get going, they did move brain chemicals around to make him feel like walking. It was a dangerous game, though. Allowing themselves to go against their conscience while bonded to an amoral soul was a good way to lose faith in the worldview they and Eddie had cultivated together, the one where being a force for good gave both their life meaning.

As they advanced, they began to hear the shrill wails of a panicking child. Allan wanted to strike the irritating voice's owner. He pictured himself hitting the small, weak being, nurtured his anger and derived a sick enjoyment from it, running the mental image over and over in his mind in way too many details.

“ **You're picturing a specific face. One you know. This isn't imagination, this is a memory.** ”

“How is that your business?”

It was their business about twice a night, in average. Every time Eddie had those nightmares, and they kept him asleep so he'd forget them, they couldn't look away, they could only relive another man's trauma over and over. What had been done to Eddie, that man had done it to another boy. They were beginning to truly hate him.

“ **Lucky for you I've promised not to consume a host again. We will check on the child, and you will stay silent.** ”

He said nothing, but they felt that the man was preparing some mean words for the probable orphan. The child turned out to be a boy of about eight years, crouching in a car's shadow, red faced from crying. Older than you'd expect to be getting into such an emotional state, but then, the situation justified a little panic attack. Especially since time had passed: it was over an hour now that he had found himself alone and still no rescue came. Until now.

The alien found themselves crossing another line in their moral landscape. An easy chemical trick: digest a tiny amount of protein, keep the glutamic acid, convert into gamma-aminobutyric acid, and there you have it, the human brain's natural off switch. Allan would sleep peacefully, and Venom would be free to act... alone.

 

They took over the body before it fell. The child stopped crying as he saw them transform, taller and leaner than their preferred form, but still recognisable as the city's lethal protector. They crouched a short distance from the stunned boy. He had gotten up, his skinny legs pressing his back to the car behind him, while his hand reached forward, pleading for help.

“ **What is your name, boy?** ”

“Timmy.”

Good God! There were parents out there actually naming their kids Timmy? They thought that only happened in movies! Timmy still looked intimidated, but wasn't struggling against his legs not to run away anymore. A hint of hope even lifted the corners of his lips into a shy, almost nonexistent smile.

“I knew you were for real! Mom said the videos were faked but I knew she was wrong. I saw the one where you stopped the thieves in the corner store and the one where you lifted a car so the paramedics could get the people out and also the one where you threw a tantrum and smashed everything like the Hulk.”

“ **That... that one was faked,** ” they lied.

“Can you help me find mom? She was driving me home and when I looked she wasn't in the car anymore and I knew how to stop the car with the key so we didn't crash but I can't see how she got out and she's not coming back and I'm scared.”

“ **Many people have disappeared today. But I'll find them.** ”

“This isn't how you talk, you always say 'we' like some kind of weird person.”

“ **Not... today.** ”

Timmy was not long to connect the dots. The rather unsettling surprise of Venom's apparition had stopped him crying, but more tears came to his eyes now, he threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around their neck.

“No! Not you too!”

They didn't quite understand why the boy would cry over them when he was already in so much grief himself, how seeing the strong stricken just the same as helpless children made the disaster seem all the more absolute. But they returned the embrace, almost entirely wrapping the small body in their long limbs, and were shocked to discover that they were crying too. They had just admitted to being alone, and without even the toxic thoughts of an unworthy host, their world felt emptier than ever. For the first time, the dread of never finding Eddie again truly caught up with them. Their roaring, inhuman wails drowned out the child's, and they cried together for what felt like an eternity.

Gradually, their sobs spaced and turned into quiet sighs, then stopped entirely. Timmy's face was covered in snot, and Venom's substance had partially lost shape, hanging off their body in stringy trickles. The kid's fingers sunk into their arm's surface when he grabbed it.

“You're made of goo,” he observed.

“ **So are you,** ” they replied, wiping Timmy's face with their hand – given where they normally lived, they weren't put off by a little mucus – and pulled themselves together. They actually felt a little better now. “ **Lets take you home?** ”

They didn't know the street the boy lived on, and he turned out to be a rather passive passenger, who never memorised what turns his mom took when driving him around. No problem though: they retrieved the car's GPS, let out a satisfied grunt when it turned on without password, and answered its synthetic voice prompt with “ **Home** ”.

_Calculating._

_Forward for 50 meters, then turn right on Vanier._

“ **You heard the lady.** ” They cradled Timmy on an arm and, securing him with tentacles so he wouldn't get shaken up too bad. “ **Ready?** ”

_Go forward for 300 meters, then turn left on 1_ _st_ _._

_Recalculating._

The GPS didn't appreciate running up a building's facade to cut through a whole block via rooftops as much as Timmy.

_Recalculating._

_Return to the road._

Symbiote tendrils couldn't reach as far as Spiderman's webs, but they still allowed powerful swings. Diving from a roof, a swing converting the free fall into horizontal acceleration, jumping all the way to the next corner.

_Recalculating._

_Turn around and go forward for 150 metres._

Running on top of the multitude of abandoned cars up to the point the boulevard dove under an overpass. Jump up, close the distance with one strong tentacle, turn on the overpass.

_Recalculating._

In a residential area now, cutting across backyards, jumping fences .

_Return to the road._

_Recalculating._

Letting the boy off now. Timmy was panting, but had a good time.

_Recalculating._

_You have arrived to: Home._

“ **Ha! Beat you!** ”

“You're not supposed to race the GPS, you know?”

Timmy was obviously amused. A few moment's excitement didn't cure grief, but it was okay to have brighter moments.

They walked up the alley and knocked on the door. Running footsteps rushed to the door, followed by a dull thump, as the body behind it went too fast to stop all the way before hitting it. The man had straightened himself up by the time he opened, but still had a wild-eyed, frantic look to his face when he swung the door in. When he found himself face to face with Venom's monstrous form, the scream that escaped his throat was already set to come out, he was that nervous. Then he lowered his eyes and saw the child. He reflectively pulled him away from the threatening looking monster, then reason caught up with him, and he forced some coherence into himself.

“Timmy, thank God, oh...” he raised his eyes again. “You... you found him. Thank you. His mother was... not there, right? Thanks, I...”

Tim's father raised his hand, hesitated, then patted Venom on the arm, pulling the mercifully spared child to his side with his other hand. Not eager to start talking about missing people again, lest they be seen crying again, they said nothing, handed him the GPS, and ran off.

 

Venom didn't change back; they could walk faster in their bonded form, and they didn't want to hand the body back to the hateful mind they felt calling for their attention again.

“ **How long have you been awake? Think I've been blocking you out.** ”

“Long enough to hear you crying like a chump.”

“ **Well then. You got a fun ride to enjoy. Was it anything like you hoped?** ”

“I said that's child's play. Besides, I wasn't in control, that's no fun.”

“ **You don't get to control our powers, I don't trust you.** ”

“How about you just piss off then? I said I'd give you a ride in exchange for powers, and so far I got nothing out of it, you're just squatting my body like some kind of parasite.”

They stopped in their tracks. The worst part of that insult was that it was entirely accurate. Their relationship with this host was entirely different from what they wanted to achieve, a heartless struggle where they were stronger, and felt little concern about the loser's wellbeing. No, there was even worse than that. They realised that, being made aware that they acted like a parasite, they  _didn't care_ .

Horror seeped into them. What they had with Eddie was what they had hoped to find all life long, and they were losing the part of themselves that made them desire it. The mutual hate ever growing between them and this host, the heartless's umwelt they currently inhabited, were eroding their conscience, making them forget everything they valued.

In a fit of rage, Venom caught their own arm between their teeth and ripped it off. Their scream held more from general turmoil than from the pain they both felt equally intensely. What's pain when the only one that really got maimed was the one they didn't care about? It didn't last anyway, they instinctively healed the stump, couldn't really not do it. A mad chuckle escaped their throat: would a parasite do that? Ha!

They had to get out, how far were they anyway? The mouthful of flesh only managed to awaken their hunger, it wasn't enough, and if they changed host without enough nutrients, they'd only hurt the next. It wouldn't do to hurt the next. If they escaped this one, and carried its madness along, if they couldn't bond in heart as well as in flesh anymore, they might as well die.

Allan was fighting to escape their control, rightfully scared and angry. His struggle mostly succeeded in forcing them to double over their mangled arm and stagger. The remainder of their road was slow, but they were almost there. They had promised never to consume a host again, they remembered. They had promised to themselves.

But... they weren't feeling like themselves.

They finally released the human, retreated inside, looking out of his eyes one last time; they better be sure which way to go before leaving him, their senses were simply not as sharp on their own. On an impulse they'd surely regret later, instead of disconnecting from his brain, they flowed along the pseudopods reaching along the nerves, thickening them, forcing painful pressure into the skull. Allan screamed and stiffened. A quick chemical switch in their cells, and the tendrils that previously spoke the subtle language of neurotransmitters formed digestive enzymes instead. Now Allan convulsed and fell over. His body twitched almost a whole minute after he was dead, while his head, then his chest for good measure, were swiftly hollowed out.

They freed themselves and oozed towards the house, where they dimly felt a single human's presence. Whatever they were heading for, it couldn't be worse.

 


	3. Intelligence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The symbiote finds Edmond, Darline's praised professor. His knowledge and resources can help put the next phase of the plan together, if his body can be made to cooperate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I finally saw Endgame. As suspected, the ending doesn't completely match this story's, so consider it an alternate universe where the timeline is shorter.

Edmond had fallen asleep in his chair again. He hated that. His head had rolled onto his shoulder in an awkward position, and now his neck and back would hurt for hours. His muscles were cramped, and some sleep twitch had knocked his cane out of his reach. Just getting up would be an ordeal, not mentioning the grueling chore of retrieving the cane from the floor. He reached for the laptop on the table in front of him and turned the music up. It helped him not doze off too often, but his hearing wasn't what it used to be and it needed to be rather loud to be effective.

“ **Ok, first of all, what the hell?** ”

That wasn't part of the music. Edmond grabbed the mouse again and checked: his usual playlist was on, there was no chance for this to be some random comment over an online stream. Had someone broken in? Given the latest news, some amount of chaos was to be expected. Whoever that was, better let them know the house was occupied... probably?

“Is anybody here?”

Speaking stirred up that awful liquid sensation in his lungs and caused him to cough, his hunched chest protesting at the sudden effort. The time he spent following the day's news on the Internet, then his unplanned nap, had allowed time to slip by, he should have taken his Digoxin hours ago.

“ **There's a scar. Across your heart. Who stabbed you?** ”

Was he finally going mad or was the voice coming from his own head? Was he dying?

“About a hundred years' worth of bad cholesterol, that's who.” He answered at nothing.

“ **You're dying on me, that's in very poor taste you know that?** ”

“Who even are you then? An angel?”

“. **..No.** ”

“A demon then?”

“ **Closer, but not quite.** ”

“I give up. What are you?”

“ **An alien.** ”

“Damn, of all the afterlife ideas I heard about, that's the one I always found stupidest.”

He cautiously leaned forward, helping himself up by leaning hard on the table, until he was balanced on shaky legs. He waited a moment to catch his breath, but found out he did not feel out of breath at all.

“ **I took out that scar and mended the muscle together. Most of the cells were still good, they just didn't get their electric signal to do their job. Your heart should work better now.** ”

He slowly stepped to where his cane had fallen. He really felt more energetic than he had at any time since his last heart attack. Unfortunately, that didn't make picking things off the floor easier. His spine was twisted by osteoporosis, and his prosthetic hip didn't have much flexibility; bending down felt like high level athletics. He had barely started to position himself when a fluid looking tentacle emerged from his palm, curled around the stick and pulled it swiftly into his hand. A flash of recognition struck him. He had seen a similar substance on some videos, having spent quite some time on social media in the recent years. Many theories circulated on a certain famous ooze monster, and they did include it being able to possess people.

“So, you would be the one they call Venom? What are you doing here?”

He felt a wave of frustration emitting from the alien.

“ **We were not that blatant, how does the whole city seem to know about us?** ”

“If it makes you feel any better, I think I can boast of being more knowledgeable than average.”

Edmond moved towards the bathroom. Forgetting a pill, with his current health, was basically suicide. It was a lengthy journey, so he kept talking, surprised to have breath to spare on top of the effort of moving his legs.

“You probably came here for a reason, I don't think my conversation skills alone would draw a visitor from outer space.”

“ **What if they did? Your former student Darline has praised your intelligence and resources. I need to find out what happened today so I can fix it. Smarts is what I need, so talk on, wise elder.** ”

“You may be in luck, then. I've spent the last hours gathering everything they'd tell the public, and trying to sort legitimate unofficial sources from conspiracy theories. I know as much as any civilian can know right now.”

He reached his pill organiser and poured the midday pills into his hand, removing two – he knew well which doses could be taken late and which were better skipped – and popped them into his mouth. Seconds later, he retched, something that felt like a worm wriggling up his throat pushing the medicine back into his mouth. He gagged until he gave up and spat it out.

“Did you do this?”

“ **This is poison!** ”

“Yes, they're strong medicine. That one, it would actually kill someone without heart failure. But I need it.”

“ **You're good at talking, but not at listening, are you?** ”

He ran the faucet and cupped some water in his hand to rinse his mouth, but allowed it to drip out when its coldness surprised him. Since California's tap water never got all that chilly, he got used to it not feeling really colder than his fingers. But right now? His fingers were pink and warm, as if blood flowed all the way through his limbs with vigor.

“You meant it! You said you mended my heart and you really did!”

“ **I need a host that is alive. No offense but your body is a disaster. I can't fix it permanently, even your DNA is damaged. Every organ has some problems. Except your liver. You kept that one pristine, good job.** ”

“Thank you...” a darker thought struck him: “Am I going to drop dead when you leave me?”

“ **I'll try my best. But we have poor compatibility, I couldn't make it work at all if I hadn't just eaten, I'm not certain of anything.** ”

“You know what? I'll take a day of feeling healthy over a month of withering away. Lets get to work.”

He tottered halfway back to the chair, but stopped when he felt something creep down his legs, up his torso, eventually along his arms. He rolled up his sleeve to see the symbiote tightly wrapping his limbs like a second layer of clothes. Tugging at its edge felt like pulling at his own skin, it had roots deep in his flesh. Knowing what to expect by now, he walked the rest of the way easily. It was years since he last walked confidently. Time steals many things one tiny bite at a time, without one noticing, but his strength had gone overnight, when he caught a pneumonia while recovering from his hip surgery. Two weeks in intensive care later, and his muscle mass was gone and nothing was easy anymore. He had never truly gotten used to it; suddenly, he felt like himself again.

 

Most of the media on the Snap talked about emergency services and said little about the causes of it. But Edmond had dug up a leak from an Avengers base staffer who couldn't resist posting what he had overheard in the hangar, talking about an extraterrestrial evil named Thanos, who used a powerful artifact to carry out the worst population control plan ever conceived. Unexpectedly, Venom seemed cheered up by the information:

“ **Magic. Figures. Humans don't disappear like that, it was magic. So it can be undone by magic. I'll find that Thanos, kill him, and take his artifact.** ”

“I seem to understand that this villain doesn't live on Earth.”

“ **I'm an alien, space doesn't scare me. I just need a ship. You have NASA contacts, don't you?** ”

“Aren't you getting overexcited now? Caref...”

His voice choked as his body was taken over and walked to the shelves, where books shared space with random knick-knacks. He felt the ooze covering his body expand and spill over his face, wrapping him up entirely. He heard a voice quite unlike his own speak up:

“ **Do not be alarmed, I need to use our abilities for the first step of my plan. It won't take long.** ”

“You could have asked. What do we need to do?”

“ **Eat this rock.** ”

“...”

He saw his – or not quite his – own hand close around a piece of limestone with a fossil print in it.

“You've got to be kidding.”

“ **I'm doing all the work holding our bond, your body can't actually support our form. So it has to be able to support yours. And there's not enough calcium in it to fix your spine.** ”

“Eating rocks won't help.” He couldn't use his mouth to speak out loud when the other was in control, but somehow he knew they heard him. “It takes as much phosphorus to make bone. And magnesium. Lots of minerals.”

“ **Detersive is made with phosphorus right? We'll get that next.** ”

“We are NOT eating Tide Pods.”

“ **We could straight up eat bones then. I know where to find a dead body.** ”

“NO!”

Edmond was growing scared. The alien's physical appearance or biology didn't freak him out, he figured a creature from another world could only be strange in that aspect, but he didn't know how different its mind could be. What felt like an impulsive but otherwise normal personality at first relied on a moral compass he couldn't read, and if it didn't think twice before desecrating a corpse, what else could it do?

“Look, the freezer is full, there's spare ribs and all sorts of meats.”

Venom grunted in agreement and knuckle-walked to the freezer.

“Can we also stand up? My... our tongue is trailing on the floor, that's very unpleasant.”

“ **No, it feels fine.** ”

“It feels disturbing to me!”

They didn't straighten up, but compromised and drew their tongue in. The things they'd do to keep a host happy! The freezer did contain a lovely selection of raw meat, frozen as hard as the rock they had just threatened to bite. They picked the cuts with bones, but also a few slices of liver, because they deserved a treat. Venom wouldn't be able to hold their form very long, but while it lasted they had teeth perfectly fit to grind through those icy delights; they made a quick job of it. Edmond felt their pleasure; it was disturbing to enjoy quite gross things through them.

“ **I have enough nutrients now. The next part is going to hurt. You may want to pass out.** ”

The old man was not a fan of unconsciousness, but after a few seconds of his entire body feeling like it was being ground into a paste, he welcomed it.

 

The floor smelled kind of nice, Edmond thought. He was lucky enough to retire with money and hired someone to maintain the house, so it was being cleaned more regularly than when he was able to do it himself. But pine soap scented or not, the floor was not a place to linger on. So he rolled on his stomach, pulled his legs under himself, and rose. To his satisfaction, he was able to straighten up all the way, and blissfully puffed his chest, no distorted ribcage keeping his lungs constrained anymore. He grinned in excitement, and noticed how his jaws sat together. He rubbed his face.

“You had to fix my teeth too?”

“ **Part of your skeleton. Why stop there?** ”

He ran his tongue over the new teeth. Small enough to fit properly in his mouth, but definitely not the right shape. Or number. Probing with a finger confirmed his first impression.

“That's not how human teeth look, though.”

“ **Why settle for an inferior model?** ”

Actually he was okay with this. Fixing his whole bones probably earned them to pick the final touch-ups. He returned to his seat and positioned the laptop in front of himself.

“So, now we can physically go to places, but we have to figure out which places. _Find Thanos_ is not what I'd call a plan. Teaming up with the Avengers sounds smarter, but they'll be hard to contact right now and it'll be a while before the roads are cleared to physically go to New York. Your idea to use my NASA contacts to reach them makes sense, they certainly take calls from government agencies, especially one that can help them get to space, given that they'll also be after that Thanos. Wait, I'll give them a call, see whom I can actually find.”

He reached for his phone, while allowing the alien to control one of his hands to browse his favourite strange news forum at the same time. There was one missed call, but it wasn't from anyone he knew, so he went this close to dismissing it, being stopped at the last second.

“ **Return that call. It's for me.** ”

“How does your lawyer know my phone number?”

“ **Beats me, she's very smart.** ”

He tapped the screen to redial the number. The call was picked almost immediately.

“Hello Ms Weiying, I saw you tried to call me?”

The voice on the other end sounded tired and tense.

“I did? Oh, yes, Mr Edmond Sioui, Darline gave me your number, I hope you don't mind. I'm sorry if this seems strange, but... have you received any unusual visitor today?”

“Unusual? Dark, damp, no conception of personal space, will put horrible things in your mouth if you don't stop him? That kind of unusual?”

“So he did find you! Is he okay? I heard Eddie had disappeared, that's terrible, those two are inseparable!”

“I'll just let you talk directly alright? Venom, that's a thing you can do, right? You just... handle the talking? I don't want to be relaying a conversation that sounds way too personal.”

They ended up in the opposite arrangement than planned: Edmond browsing the web while Venom talked on the phone. However his attempts to distract himself failed to keep him from guiltily eavesdropping on words that he felt were not for his ears.

“I thought you were gone too.” He heard his own voice say. “Is Dan safe?”

“Yes, we got lucky. Sorry we didn't answer the phone, we somehow ended up in charge of keeping the whole block from panicking. Right now Dan is trying to break into a house, neither of the Steinberg have shown up and we can hear their baby crying.” Her voice sounded weaker as she took the phone away from her ear for an instant: “Just break a window, Dan.”

A yet more distant voice answered: “I'm a surgeon, picking a lock is nowhere as delicate as what I do every day! I'll figure this out!”

After an emphatic sigh, Anne resumed talking on the phone: “How are you holding up? I'm glad you're safe, but no other host is Eddie. I'm... I like him too, but I can't imagine how you...”

“I'll bring him back. I found out he got removed by magic already. So I need to find that same magic. I'll go to space, find Thanos, kill him...”

“Venom, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say. Go to space? Space is big, you of all people should know! Don't you dare throw your life away!”

“I'm not stupid, I'm looking for clues right now! But I won't sit there while Eddie needs help.”

“I'm not asking you to do nothing, just... be smart about it. You're not stupid, but you're hella emotional, and today's not the time to think with your heart, we both know it's only thinking about one thing. Even if he can't... whether he can be saved or not, you know Eddie would want you to live. Enough people are lost right now, don't you... you're precious too, okay?”

Anne's voice had broken throughout the last two sentences, and she had to pause not to cry. She had to look strong and composed to fill the role she had appointed herself and organise her immediate neighbourhood, but she was probably missing friends and relatives like everybody else; it wasn't fair to pile more worries on her.

“I promise,” they said, “no matter what we end up doing, it will be with a plan. We will certainly face danger, but not without reason. Can't bring everyone back without being alive for it, right?”

They didn't exchange much more useful information during that call, but it felt good to know some familiar people were still alive. As they were wishing each other luck and saying goodbye, Venom could hear the sound of breaking glass and Dan's outraged protestation and felt a little spark of pride. Good old Anne.

 

“ **What's that?** ”

They were aware of Edmond's unsuccessful attempt at not peeking at their conversation, but didn't mention it. What they did bring up was the links he had clicked trying to distract himself. The forum had a complicated system of subsections, and the one being displayed right now was about a ship that was sighted by amateur astronomers all over the world. The old man, having clearly read that content before, explained:

“Something that might interest you right now. Do you know the number of high quality telescopes being pointed at the sky every night by thousands of enthusiasts? The world knows what's going on in orbit. One of those things is that the Avengers don't have a space fleet. And it's well known that NASA doesn't have faster than light vehicles. But look at this...”

Surprisingly good pictures of a Kree ship peppered the discussion thread.

“This is clearly above our technological level, people agree that it must be alien. It couldn't have made it here without faster than light travel, and it spent months in a stable orbit, its passengers must be on the surface doing God knows what. In all likehood, if you can board it and figure out the commands, it's yours.”

“ **So if we took control of a space shuttle...** ”

“Not so fast. I don't know about you, but I can't calculate a launch window or anything of the sort. Fortunately, those nerds have put in a lot of work, and so we know its orbit takes it within a few kilometers of the ISS about twice a day. The numbers are in that link if they mean anything to you.”

They wouldn't, actually; Venom wasn't stupid, but this was literally rocket science, it was a little out of their league.

“ **So if we reach the ISS, and jump at the right time, we can catch it.** ”

“That's still a stupid plan, but I'm on board.”

“ **Edmond... I'm sorry but...** ”

“I know, I expect to die at the end of this.”

“ **I won't kill you.** ”

“I'll burn out though. You know what we'll do next, I'll walk you to the Bay launch site, up a lot of slopes, I'll walk fast like a young man, because you fixed my body for it. But I'm not actually young, so when you move on... you know I'm not the one who'll take you to space, you need an astronaut, you'll have to leave me... then I'll have spent a lot more energy than I can afford. It's alright. I wasn't expecting to live that many more days, I'm grateful you made the last one interesting.”

“ **I consumed a host today, against my promise. I won't do that again. I won't** _ **burn you out**_ **.** ”

“Then what are you sorry about?”

“ **Not taking you along. We're not a very good match, we can't use our powers together. I can boost your strength a little, but we're talking about entirely human levels, we'll have to stay out of trouble.** ”

“I can work with that.”

They made phonecalls, but Edmond's contacts – those they did manage to join – were not conveniently located to help them, except for rather useful information: there was a launch planned for the next day, they couldn't let the Snap delay it, it was intended to carry supplies to the ISS and astronauts needed to eat, worldwide disaster or not.

Finally, Edmond got dressed to go out. Didn't clothes fit better when he could stand straight? He took his cane along just in case, and started walking.

 

The Bay launch site used to belong to the Life Foundation, until two consecutive rocket explosions and a bizarre accident killing dozens of its control room technicians, along with the CEO, convinced its investors to scrap its space division. The site was sold to pay off some lawsuits, and the government took control of it. After repairs to its facilities, it was used to launch probes, satellites and shuttles, for NASA, foreign government agencies and private companies alike.

“ **It wasn't an accident.** ” The tone sounded like what they wanted to say was a hilarious joke. “ **We were there, when the second rocket blew up. Want to know what we did?** ”

Listening to the story on the way was welcome: the streets themselves were depressing. People had finished evacuating the stalled tangle of the lanes, leaving empty cars behind. Only a few had returned to gather some of their personal belongings, but otherwise the city was sad and silent, people were mostly at home, hanging on to whatever they had left. Walking along a commercial street, Edmond noticed that some shopkeepers and employees had stayed at work. Clinging to an illusion of normalcy? Protecting their property from eventual looters? Keeping society running by dutifully working through the end of the world? He decided it wouldn't be fair to judge them on how they chose to cope.

He felt strangely alert to potentially dangerous situations. The alien was used to playing hero, because it enjoyed action as much as to indulge its usual host's fancies, they were always paying attention. But any emergencies they could have helped handle had been dealt with in the previous hours, so the walk was uneventful.

Being sharply dressed helped Edmond go unnoticed as he walked into the facility. Its outer area had more relaxed security than in its private ownership days, but he expected he'd have to explain his presence at some point. He looked at a map of the facilities, laminated on a wall. It would make more sense for the complex to include sleeping quarters than to have astronauts and specialised workers scatter into hotels and their schedule being vulnerable to traffic jams. The publicly accessible wings were clearly labeled, but only the most noteworthy restricted ones had any indication. The launch platform, maintenance hangars and control room were identified, but the offices, staff rooms and laboratories were only a series of nameless rectangles. Nevertheless, he could narrow down his search to a smallish area.

The main entrance security desk wasn't manned, but the one he found on his way to the secured area was tended by two tired looking guards. Edmond greeted them.

“Thank you for staying at your post in such a time, I admire your bravery. I need to speak to Mr Terrence, I believe he can be found in this area?”

The younger guard raised his eyebrows:

“The astronaut? You know they're busy this close to a launch, people can't just walk in uninvited. Are you a relative?”

“More like a friend of a friend. I talked to Yann today, I have a private message for Terrence. You can call him if you need to confirm.”

The guard nodded and dialed the number he recited, while his colleague checked his ID. The phonecall seemed to go as desired, but the older guard looked increasingly suspicious as she compared the picture on the card with Edmond's actual face. She nudged her colleague:

“Eric, that's a fake ID. I don't know what the old guy is up to, but he's going to go be up to it somewhere else.”

“It's not fake!” Edmond protested.

“Sir, I'm used to unflattering ID pictures, but it says you were born in 1921, and there's no way you're nearly a hundred years old. Sixty, at most? How about you just turn around and go home without trouble?”

That was unexpected. Edmond had worried his excuse to see Mr Terrence wouldn't be believed, and it was, it's his identity that caused trouble? He looked around until he found a satisfyingly reflective glass pane. Gosh! His skin was as wrinkly as ever, but the restored bone and muscle mass did straighten and fill up is face, looking nowhere near his actual age.

“Between everyone who disappeared and the ones who no doubt left to protect their homes during this crisis, you don't happen to be stretched too thin to call reinforcements if I happened to try to fight my way past you?”

“You don't want to go there, old man, we have batons.”

The woman put her hand on the weapon to show she meant business. No guns, not even a taser. Maybe... the voice in his head interrupted his train of thoughts:

“ **I said we couldn't use our powers, remember? Don't get in a fight, for all practical purposes, you're on your own.** ”

“I used to be a fifth dan at judo, didn't completely stop before the mid 80s.” He smiled at the absurdity of his boast, and went on: “We'll see how rusty one gets in thirty years.”

He brandished his cane like a bokken, still smiling and feeling like an idiot. The guards didn't seem very impressed by the threat, and simply stayed on his way. The young one... Eric? Eric made a face, cringing a little:

“What the hell is wrong with your teeth?”

The woman looked too, and looked just as uneasy: “That old guy is not normal...”

Shaking, she stepped closer, holding her baton straight in her outstretched arm, to keep her body as far from his as possible while she poked him. She used the tip to expose the suspicious layer she saw under the edge of his clothes. The tarry black, wet substance that clung intimately to the old flesh was familiar to anyone with a liking for the paranormal and urban legends. She screamed:

“HOLY SHIT HE'S WEARING A SYMBIOTE!”

In her surprise, she stumbled against the edge of her desk, caught her balance and scrambled over the desktop in an instinct driven movement directly away from him. The young guard looked alarmed by his senior's panic, his gaze switching between her and the weird elder:

“What's that?”

She panted, still edging away, but forced some calm back into herself for her colleague's benefit:

“Didn't you see the videos? The big monster guy called Venom. Could be another one like him. Get away, he can rip your head off if you piss him off!”

“No way, Venom is this huge guy, not a slightly freaky little old man!”

“He can hide inside people, that's one of his powers. If he touches you he could infect you too, step back!”

While the woman's flight or fight instinct was spot on, the young man's went the opposite way and attempted to hit Edmond's wrist with his baton. The elder was pleased to discover that his muscle memory had survived decades of disuse and he angled his cane on time to deflect the blow, using the impact's energy to accelerate his own stick in a curve that hit the guard sharply on the shoulder. The baton clattered on the floor, and its owner clutched his arm, eyes watering. He grabbed him and held him close:

“And we weren't even using our powers. But we can talk this out, Eric.”

The guard nodded stiffly, too frightened to talk. A glance at his friend confirmed that she was not trying to attack.

“Good. Listen. A bad guy named Thanos is responsible for everybody disappearing, and he's up there in space. If Venom can make it to the ISS, he knows how to catch an alien ship from there and get Thanos. He'll bring everyone back. He's a good guy when he wants to be, and right now he's extremely motivated: the Snap got his husband. I know your security job asks that you stop us, but billions of lives say you help sneak him into the rocket.”

Eric was just pulling away from Edmond's grasp, too focused on Venom's invisible presence to do anything coherent. He turned towards the other guard:

“Just call Terrence, okay? The symbiote won't touch him unless he agrees to carry it, promised, you'll put no one in danger by doing that.”

It was her turn to nod in stunned silence. Her survival instinct begged her to comply. He tried to look as harmless as possible, to convince her that no harm would come from helping him. Lowering his cane, he leaned his weight on it, not moving much while she fought against herself. Finally, she gave in, and dialed a few numbers on the desk's phone. She wasn't being a coward, she was helping save the world... right?

“Hello, Mr Terrence? This is Sandra, from wing C's security desk. Can you see someone right now? There's a complicated situation here, it's hard to explain on the phone... yes. Yes, thank you, I'll take them to you.” She turned to Eric: “You take care of the desk while I'm gone.”

 

Tom Terrence was a tall, athletic blond, with the kind of face you'd easily imagine on a toothpaste ad. Even in the stressing situation, he looked dynamic and focused. He thanked Sandra and gestured her away, obviously enjoying his independence too much to be comfortable with having a security escort when it didn't feel necessary.

“So, Sir, what situation requires such a busy man's attention?”

Edmond held his hand up, and his hidden companion followed his idea, flowed from around his wrist, wrapped his fingers and formed their strong, clawed hand out of his. He looked at Tom in the eyes:

“How would you like to have the power to save everyone?”

The astronaut tried to keep a straight face, but couldn't keep himself from smiling. Now that wasn't someone he was expecting to meet!

“You're Venom. Wow, there's a surprise. So you just look like a regular guy when you're not in action?”

“Not quite. Venom is... teamwork. I am a regular guy, with an unusual friend. And now I've taken him as far as I could, and he needs a new partner. One that knows his way around space travel, specifically.”

The man held and inspected their hand, fascinated, while Edmond explained the plan. Venom was satisfied by his touch, learning from it that he had an acceptable compatibility, but sulked at the fact that they were once more recognised by unrelated strangers. Eddie wouldn't be happy to find out how abyssal their attempt at keeping a low profile had turned out. They extended probing tendrils at the exploring hand, allowing the fingers to curl and twist around them, and decided it was a good sign: Tom was intensely curious and would eagerly experience bonding, but didn't show the greed Allan had expressed, his desire to have their powers with no respect for the soul that came with them. They could get along.

“... and that's all I know.” Edmond was concluding. “We'll look for someone else if you don't consent, but you're in a perfect position to help. Do you want to try?”

“Wow, I'm...” he clutched the symbiote-wrapped hand; “I'm honored, really. Of course I'll try, there's a chance we catch this Thanos and reverse his magic? Everyone wants that to happen, I can't believe I get to help.”

Edmond was thoughtful for a moment, then took a more solemn tone:

“He promises I'll be alright when he leaves my body, but I know he's supporting my metabolism right now, I'm afraid he underestimates just how old I am. I exerted myself more than a man my age can afford today, and when I fall back on my own strength, I think I'll... be unwell. Please don't let it scare you, it's nature.”

Tom clenched his jaw, knowing what the old man's euphemism hinted of and not quite knowing what to answer to that. Edmond grabbed his hand and squeezed.

“Go now, there's no sense in wasting time.”

The fluid being spread forward and coiled around the new host's arm, but didn't quite cross over yet. They had last words for their previous companion, first:

“ **I'm not taking back the repairs I made. You're still old, but you're healthy now. The fixes will hold for a while.** ”

“A while?”

“ **I'm sorry to say that they'll degrade over time. It may get as bad as before in about twenty years.** ”

Not to entirely put his fatalism to shame, he did faint when the symbiote disconnected from his body.


	4. Transcendence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An astronaut should be the logical choice for a ride to space, but an unexpected danger lurks ahead: is there such a thing as a too good match?

They felt guilty for feeling that good. Terrence's body was flawless. Not just in comparison with the previous one, its health was simply outstanding. Eddie was strong and in a fairly good shape, but they had to live with his reliance on comfort food, erratic sleeping pattern and occasional drinking binge. Now this, this was the most comfortable host they'd ever seen, a symbiotic garden of Eden. They were ashamed to compare, but couldn't help it.

Terrence was scared, but mostly excited. They couldn't tell more, it took careful probing before connecting to the brain could be done safely, they didn't rush it, but hormones talked their own language. Adrenaline spoke for any kind of arousal, while cortisol had more to tell about fear, and dopamine said it wasn't all that bad, actually. It made for an aromatic chemical background, complementing the perfectly balanced nutrients they were bathing in. They felt safe spreading out, entwining ever finer tendrils around organs, through the spongy network of loose connective tissue, following arteries to their destination and back, stretching until no central mass remained and they disappeared into their host. This was the life.

Sensations poured in. With every nerve conquered, they felt, saw, heard with sensory organs more sensitive than they could form on their own, and they could improve on them, if they wanted. Each time, it was a new world opening up to them, and despite the loud, bright enormousness of it, it couldn't silence the quiet whisper of a body's inner workings, the delicate intimacy of a life trusted to them. It would be hard to describe how refreshing it was to feel the soft weight of clean clothes on one's skin, when one couldn't even take having skin for granted. Venom had been mocked as absurdly romantic on their home planet, this world had vindicated them: the symbiosis their more conservative kin passed on was _happiness_.

Satisfyingly settled in, they set out to properly introduce themselves, but Terrence beat them to it:

“Oh, there you are!”

 

He had many contradicting expectations, and of course, none quite matched how it really felt like. For one thing, it was more subtle than he thought. He expected pain, or confusion, or maybe even pleasure, who knows? But really, the alien wove its way in extremely discretely; he felt twitches and pressure here and there, but nothing he wouldn't have blamed on fatigue if he hadn't been intensely paying attention. Maybe it was survival instinct: not being noticed made sure they wouldn't be fought while they were still vulnerable. Made one wonder how the species evolved; Venom had asked for his consent before borrowing his body, but they weren't designed to need it, were they? What would have humanity gone through if more than one of them had made it to Earth?

Then, the world seemed to come into focus. Or he felt _them_ alight onto his senses, an echo of their impressions adding a new depth to his universe. It was as if a hole he didn't know existed had just been filled inside him. It was... great! There was still a gap between the new mind and his own, kept deliberately, he realised, because the symbiote was not new at this and knew how much privacy a human needed to be comfortable with them; it felt like hanging out with a close friend, not like being intruded on. Terrence smiled. The alien could have been a predatory fiend, it could have violated its hosts and taken anything else it wanted, but it didn't choose the darker path written into its genetics, it wanted to be a friend.

“Oh, there you are!” was not the smartest conversation opener he had ever come up with, but it summed up his feelings, somehow. He went on: “I didn't expect you to feel so gentle. That's certainly not what you'd guess from those videos.”

“ **Bonding isn't always this smooth. Your body is** _ **very**_ **welcoming, no rough edges at all.** ”

“It's made me hungry, though. Lets go and see in what state the cafeteria is?”

That was one immediate project they could agree on. They made small talk on the way, but stopped as Terrence reached the wing's security desk. The two guards conspicuously looked away. He leaned on the corner of the desk, a little too close for their comfort. Of course, they knew about the unusual stowaway, as much as they wished they didn't, denying wouldn't help the situation.

“Guys, you're a non-strategic government building's security, do you think you'll get blamed if an alien sneaks onto the International Space Station under your nose? That's above your pay grade, relax! A situation you can't do anything about is not your responsibility.”

He chuckled, patted Eric – who had the misfortune of being the closest – on the shoulder, causing him to wince, and walked on.

“ **Aren't you just guilting them further talking like that?** ”

“I hope I'm not going to scare you away: that's about as mean as I can get. The poor guys didn't deserve it, but it's so ridiculous I can't help finding it funny. I mean... we're our best shot at catching Thanos, but it's literally their job to stop us, and they know it's pointless to try. They could get in trouble no matter what happens, and on top of that they don't know what you're really up to! I'm glad I don't work in security! Gosh, imagine being a cop today!”

“ **Eddie says security personnel is mostly honest working class people and we should not eat them even if they are being a nuisance.** ”

“I know, I know! You're pretty uptight for someone who thinks eating people is an option at all.”

“ **Eddie has laid out many rules about who can be eaten. Only bad guys, but not even all bad guys. Only the ones no one else will stop. If you kill a CEO, police will catch you. If you kill a homeless boy, police will let the trail grow cold. A wealthy judge can admit to rape and walk free. Those are for us.** ”

“Do you know what we call a serial killer with a code of honor?”

“ **What?** ”

“A serial killer.”

Terrence passed the main entrance and climbed the four steps that lead to wing G without his usual 3:16 minutes break. That's how long it took to take the recommended wheelchair friendly route around that section, and the engineers encouraged any employee who dared to wait that much out, on the clock of course. But today, nobody would notice the protestation and he'd only be punishing himself. After a moment of silence, Venom's voice interrupted his thoughts again:

“ **You're not actually offended.** ”

“Offended?”

“ **You call us a serial killer, but you don't mind.** ”

“Why do you think every time someone catches you on video it goes viral? Humans are stupid, given the choice we'll have a hero over a civil servant. Even if you know vigilantism isn't justice, if you know the punishment depends more on pissing off the wrong person than how bad the crime actually was, you know the net is full of holes, and you want to think the shark that catches what fish wiggle their way out is actually on your side. My brain's not a fan, but my heart is, I can't help it.”

 

The cafeteria had been deserted immediately after the Snap. Of course, half the people suddenly crumbling into dust must have looked particularly horrifying wherever a large gathering of people could be found, and it happened only a little after dinner time, there'd still be quite a lot of employees and visitors in there. The cooks and washers were gone as well, _hopefully_ to their home, leaving cold, congealing food on the tables, and quite a bit of panic-related mess. Someone had been thoughtful enough to turn off the ovens and stuff the ingredients back into the fridge, but the prepared dishes were still under the heater. He didn't know how long food could stay there and still be safe to eat, so he'd fix something else up. He walked up to a wall-mounted phone and dialed the security desk's extension.

“Sandra, this is Terrence. Yeah I know, I know. But I'm at the cafeteria right now, and it's in complete disarray. I don't know about you, but I'm starving. We're supposed to be resting to be fresh and pretty for tomorrow's launch, and we'll just have vending machine junk for supper? Not a good look, I say! Can you check who's up for a warm meal and send them over here? No, I won't eat them!”

He had time to check the kitchen's inventory before anyone came, stopping Venom from using his own hand to stuff a slice of raw meat in his mouth twice in the process. The alien sounded mostly reasonable, but they sure had impulse control issues! Well, there was _enough_ food as far as he could tell, but of predictably sad cafeteria quality. He could always put some butter and spices in the freezer-burned vegetables, they'd still be freezer-burned vegetables. The first guests entered the place.

“Oh hey Karen, I had no idea you were here!”

“I wasn't too far to come when they called.” The newcomer answered. “Two people are missing on the ISS too, that leaves only two up there, it's not safe to run it on that little manpower. We can either send more crew up there, or evacuate it entirely, and we have no idea how hard it'll be to get it started again if we abandon it who knows how long.”

“So they just called you at the last minute like that? They can do that?”

“Me and Andrew. It's a wonder we have a contingency plan at all, I don't think 'half the crew vanishing without a trace' is something they imagined would happen.”

“If I didn't know what I know, I'd feel bad we're spending millions going to space when the whole world's in a crisis. But I'm not telling anything before supper. Do you mind being requisitioned for a last minute job a second time today? I wouldn't mind help cooking, or cleaning up a couple of tables.”

When a second wave of guests came, after a delay suspiciously close to 3:16 minutes, the first wave had pretty much taken over the necessary tasks, so most ended up sitting and chatting. Of course it was easy to find extra pairs of arms in this crowd; the people who had been asked to stay, in addition to the astronauts, were engineers, techs, a whole lot who wouldn't have been there if they hadn't been workaholics to begin with.

Terrence was trying to make frozen vegetables palatable while Karen attempted a similar magic on rubbery pork chops. He had also put a batch of generic brand tater tots in the oven, and couldn't explain it; starchy food was the last thing you wanted if you were going to share a tiny box of canned air with another – correction, three other – friends for hours. He reined himself in when it came to servings though. He filled his plate in proportion to his hunger, drawing more than a few weird looks, but the spuds amounted to a fairly small amount of it.

He'd have thought the symbiote would be in a hurry to dig in to the meat, but it turned out they were the one who craved the tots, and emitted intense disappointment after driving him to start with one. Terrence didn't really get why; they were not the worst he had, he wasn't a big fan, but as far as potatoes went they held their own. He whispered:

“What's wrong?”

“ **They taste right, I don't get it.** ”

They weren't able to pinpoint what was wrong. Terrence tried to focus on the emotional echoes his brain received from its strange passenger, attempting to read more subtle signals than what communication they already shared. The other mind responded to this invitation almost automatically, splitting already fine strands to connect to more neurons, creeping forward into his brain, spreading ever so thin, tendrils too fine to maintain conscious control of them. In their moody state, the tighter connexion sparked what the food had failed to bring to life. The host recognised the feeling:

“Comfort, that's what's missing. Your Eddie, he stress-eats. The tots soothe _him_ , you can't really enjoy them through me. Right?”

He'd have hugged them if they were anywhere he could touch, but it wasn't necessary, they felt his sympathy, leaned into it, into a little corner of their mind that wasn't any of theirs anymore, and that little shared space was a touch closer than anything physical could achieve. They responded by reaching further into his limbs, entwining single-cell thick strands into his muscles, surrendering control of that much of their mass to his nerves. Comfort, they did find that there.

With colleagues taking place by his side, Terrence couldn't speak to his companion in private, but Venom wasn't a bother, actually, they seemed to get even less talkative as time went. The meal went down easily, considering what ingredients they had to work with, but without much to note, nourishment that they'd need, a bit of small talk with coworkers, nothing out of the ordinary. Before leaving the cafeteria, the group brought their dishes back to the kitchen and rinsed the worst of the residue off them, trying not to leave a worse mess than necessary for when the actual kitchen staff would return.

 

Terrence took the other astronauts aside, leading them to wing G, which should be deserted at this time.

“Guys,” he said after he was sure that nobody was peeking, “I'm up to something, and it wouldn't be fair to involve you without coming clean first.”

He started by bringing them up to date about the Thanos situation, the Kree ship, and finally, the plan to smuggle the symbiote to space. His friends looked at him with varying degrees of disbelief. Of course, if someone else came up with that story, he'd think they're either crazy, or very bad liars.

“Alright, I expected I'd have to show you the receipts. Can't blame you.”

To be perfectly honest, Terrence had been looking for an excuse to power up since... since the start actually. Who wouldn't be dying to know how that'd feel like? Strangely, he knew how to do that. He had assumed taking on Venom's form meant letting them take command, relying on mutual trust to still get a word in on what they'd actually do, but that's not what happened. He knew how to drive the symbiote to take form, it wasn't hard, it was really building from the shape he provided, and didn't he know his own body already? The goo was so intimately entwined into him it was basically acting like an extension of himself.

It wasn't hard, but it was intense. It wasn't his own sensory organs he was using anymore, but the alien mind processed the odd signals, allowed him to make sense of them, and in the process, pulled him into its own world. Its presence was his thoughts' background, reaching him through so many delicate bridges, the connexions feeding information to and from his brain lighting up his inner landscape like the million stars of a clear sky. Up to that point, he had only known the other's impressions through the bond, now he was able to feel the bond itself, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever known.

He needed to steady himself. Their hand rose and gripped the wall, concrete crumbling between their claws like dry sand. Stumbling, he realised they had almost crushed Andrew between their body and the wall... it would not feel like sand to him. He spurred the symbiote back into focus. They needed to be alert.

“ **Wow.** ”

Karen recovered from the initial shock of their sudden transformation and approached them, cautiously touching their arm. She must have felt them trembling:

“Are you okay? What is it like?”

Terrence knew the word from new-agey nonsense he never thought anything nice about, but now he understood its meaning:

“ **Transcendence.** ”

“... and what does _that_ feel like?”

“ **This.** ”

Right. The cryptic, useless answer was just on par with Terrence's idea of humour, actually. The videos didn't pay justice to the monster's appearance. It always looked larger than humans, but this large? No, wait... this corridor had ten foot ceilings, and Venom's head almost reached it. People with too much time to waste on the internet had measured them against random objects they had been filmed standing near to, and agreed on an eight foot estimate. They really were larger than usual.

Their face was cleaner looking than expected, too, molded close to Terrence's skull shape, with neatly fitting jaws that didn't let drool run down their chin. It didn't take such strange tastes to find them handsome, in a way. Well, that certainly proved the alien's presence, assuming no collective hallucination was involved.

“ **Now you know we're not crazy.** ”

“Now there,” she disputed, “I don't see why aliens existing and you being crazy should be mutually exclusive.”

“Karen,” Andrew whimpered in, “are you provoking the giant man-eating monster?”

“Look, they want to launch themselves from the ISS while we're inside it, and probably take Terrence along. Not figuring out if that plan is literally insane or not could be deadlier than potentially offending them.”

“ **That's fair but also hilarious.** ”

Venom was actually upset, but not by the conversation happening around them. Regular humans coming to terms with their existence was a regular source of entertainment. They enjoyed the emotional confusion that could lead anywhere between fear, admiration, arousal, curiosity – frankly there was no way the human psyche couldn't settle when face to face with the unknown – so people bickering around them was just part of the game. But something was not working like expected...

“ **I should be the one speaking aloud.** ”

“ **What do you mean?** ”

“ **When we take our form, I should be controlling our body. That's just how it works. So why are you the one talking?** ”

“ **Why do you ask me? You should be the one who knows, I've never done this before!** ”

There was one advantage to Venom's utter failure at secrecy: everybody knew arguing with themselves was a normal habit of theirs and it didn't weight too much in deciding if they were sane enough to trust.

“What if you showed us you can be disciplined enough to rely on?” Karen asked. “Because the techs were talking about problems readying the rocket for tomorrow's launch, we seem to have no lift driver.”

Of course, the Snap meant every enterprise was short of qualified workers; if it wasn't fixed quickly, industries could be entirely paralysed in the next weeks, city folks could starve, depending on how bad it got. But Venom wasn't too worried about that: if they were insane in any way, it was in how much faith they put in their ability to reverse it. The alien's voice commanded:

“ **Crouch.** ”

“ **Why?** ”

“ **You'll see, it'll be funny.** ”

Terrence decided to oblige. The other was obviously unsettled to find out they were not in control, and he could understand it. They didn't even ask for that much time interacting with the outside world directly, but somehow his body was denying them that chance. It wouldn't be fair not to at least listen, then.

He lowered their body, finding out that with their center of gravity, they had to lean on at least one fist not to lose balance, so their crouch looked more like a prowling beast's stance than a resting human's. Gee, did Venom purposely shape their body to look as scary as possible or what? Then he remembered that Karen had asked a question:

“ **We fear nothing, not even a day of honest labour.** ”

The woman smiled, probably not even noticing she did, and wrapped her arm around theirs, right below the shoulder, now that it was at her reach. She guided them to the launching platform, the same one they had trashed fighting Riot a mere day after meeting Eddie. They had taken quite a beating and ended the day on fire, but still kept nostalgia about the place. Intrusive commentary kept interrupting Terrence's thoughts:

“ **She could just walk ahead, no need to touch like this.**

**There's only one thing funnier than humans who are scared of us.**

**It's humans who aren't scared of us.**

**It embarrasses Eddie so much when they do that.**

**Don't escalate it though, we're monogamous.** ”

Terrence paid attention and had to agree that Karen was having a little too much fun. Being in control of the monster, even if she couldn't actually coerce it and only drove it around with its consent, was clearly exciting her, and he couldn't swear it didn't involve sentiments he'd rather not associate with ooze monsters.

“ **Don't say that, it's weird.** ”

“ **You just have to deal with the fact that we're sexy.** ”

“ **I'd rather not.** ”

“ **Some people beg us to eat them.** ”

“ **I could have lived without knowing that!** ”

“ **You should see us with Eddie, we're magnificent.** ”

“ **Don't project feelings that loud, lover boy!** ”

“ **It's not just love, he really is the best. We are the best.** ”

“ **I'm literally feeling your feelings there, off that train of thoughts.** ”

“ **Not that we're not in love too!** ”

“ **Stop making me feel hot for a guy I never met!** ”

The astronauts kept walking, but were all staring. Karen released Venom's arm and made a point to walk one big step away from them. Andrew tripped on the objectionable wing G steps in his failure to look where he was going.

“So...” he finally dared to comment, probably to distract from his embarrassing stumble, “would this conversation sound better or worse if we heard both halves of it?”

Venom grinned widely, and without a doubt both their halves agreed to the mischievous response:

“ **So much worse.** ”

They let them stew in their own dirty imaginations for a whole 3:16 minutes before resuming walking.

 

Their entrance into the launch area was not immediately noticed. Those workers could boast of an amazing focus and dedication. But as soon as someone saw them, they warned the others, and suddenly all the work ground to a halt, while technicians were at various stages of either straining their eyes to find them, or, having done so, gesturing at their colleagues and trying to direct their attention.

Terrence was going to simply walk onward and ask the supervisor what heavy things they needed moved, in lack of a lift driver, but Venom sent him a mix of mental images and proprioceptive signals as a suggestion for a much better entrance. He couldn't disagree. Flinging tentacles at some scaffolding ahead of them, they used them to accelerate themselves through the air, falling back in the middle of the busiest area. Their landing actually shook the platform. While their legs bent to absorb the shock in one powerful bounce, they struck a pose, limbs splayed to look even larger than they were. Terrence's stronger influence on their form gave them a cleaner-looking face, but there they dislocated their jaw to fully display their teeth, the drool they hadn't allowed to ooze out before now dripping off their tongue while they bellowed an inhuman roar. Too bad nobody had the time to whip out their camera for this moment, but there was such a thing as timing.

They ended their display and moved towards the group of workers they were probably supposed to help, keeping them under their predatory gaze, still being their scariest selves. They hadn't left anyone time to recover, and people scrambled away at their approach. They cornered the supervisor against a pile of equipment.

“ **We heard you were missing a lift driver?** ”

The poor man was barely coherent, but managed to put a sentence together:

“Why, can you drive a lift?”

“ **Maybe, is it difficult?** ”

The poor worker had suffered enough. They relaxed their stance and stood a little less close.

“ **We'll move the heavy stuff you'd need a lift for. Without even smashing it.** ”

The supervisor's fear was beginning to smell through, making Venom salivate. They reeled their tongue in and closed their mouth; that made two hosts who didn't like drooling all over themselves in a row, were humans delicate or what? But eventually, instructions came:

“The platform needs to be cleared, there's all this equipment we're done with and should be taken back into the hangar. We don't dare letting someone untrained drive the forklift so close to the rocket, so we're stuck with no way to move the heaviest stuff.”

That was easy work, so they quickly finished it. A good thing it didn't take long, too, because they clearly were the only one working, everyone else simply watching. And now, some had taken their phone out and were filming. Didn't it feel nice, always being the most interesting thing around? After confirming that nobody needed their assets anymore, they lumbered away, not forgetting to look deliberately grotesque for the cameras, and stopped by Terrence's friends. Karen scolded them:

“You had to make a show, did you?”

“ **We're a monster aren't we? The Latin root for 'monster' literally means 'show'. Just staying in character here.** ”

“You're also a smartass, great. Now what are you going to do? We can find some quiet spot for you to change back but people will suspect the alien is still in the place. Could cancel the launch, if anyone gets paranoid.”

“ **We'll leave through the woods, Terrence will come back to the employee area the roundabout way.** ”

“I guess that can work.”

 

Venom ran into the woods surrounding the property in their rather liberal interpretation of bipedalism. While they enjoyed to give random bystanders a good fright, they actually didn't see the teenager on their path until they almost collided with her. In lack of working public transportation, the girl had obviously attempted to take a shortcut home, but as the sun was setting, the wood's lack of artificial light meant almost certainly getting lost. She screamed, backed up, tripped on a rock, and stayed on the ground while her heart slowly returned to a normal rate.

“You... I... I know you.”

She got up, still shaking, and brushed the worst of the dirt off her skirt.

“They say you want to be a hero, but you can't help eating people. Are you here to help, or...?”

She clung to a sapling, stepping behind the skinny trunk that absolutely couldn't hide her. Now was probably not the best time to act scary.

“ **We just ate. Still plenty of food for a lost kid at the complex. Wait.** ”

Terrence wasn't clear on how they did it, but in an easy motion, his cellphone was out of his pocket and in their hand. They dialed the complex's number, then the security desk's extension.

“ **Sandra? Guess who! Actually we're going away, you'll get the astronaut back alive, promised. But before that, we're sending you some kid that got lost. Give her dinner and some room to spend the night. We'll find out if you don't.** ”

They showed her the way, but didn't come along. The building's lights were impossible to miss, she wouldn't get lost on that path. The girl looked disappointed, not because they didn't eat her – hopefully – but because they used such mundane means to help her out. While they had the phone out, they might as well make another call.

“ **Who's Anne and why do we need to call her?** ”

“ **Eddie's ex, a friend, and our lawyer.** ”

“ **You have a lawyer? What does she say about biting bad guys' head off?** ”

“ **Sound legal advice. She says 'Don't let the police catch you or you're toast.'** ”

“ **Sensible. You always keep her up to date?** ”

“ **Better let her save your number,**

**I forgot my previous notes in another host's pocket.**

**Eddie will want to thank you later.**

**We'll bring you cake.**

**Strawberry.**

**When we try to carry chocolate cake**

**accidents always happen, can't explain it.** ”

“ **You know I can tell when you're lying?** ”

The symbiote had tried to memorise Anne's number from the last call, but they had to look it up again. The phone was picked quickly; a crying baby could be heard in the background.

“ **Hello Anne.** ”

“Oh! Venom! Wait, that's your big monster voice, you're suited up right now, are you in trouble?”

“ **No, we'll change back a little later. We're just feeling fine that way.** ”

“Alright. How's your plan coming along? On our side, Dan is taking care of the baby, and I got neighbours to move abandoned cars into stores' parking lots to clear the streets, two more corners and we'll have a direct route to the hospital, if anyone needs it.”

“ **We're taking off tomorrow, then we can exit the station and board an alien ship. We still have to find Thanos, but with a ship secured, the Avengers will certainly take us seriously, they might even want to come along.** ”

“What kind of aliens? Your kind?”

“ **Don't know, not Klyntar that's for sure. There's clear up and down sides to the design, so they use artificial gravity, and they should be about human sized. The ship's been orbiting for a while, V think it's parked there and no one should be there to put up a fight.** ”

“Wait, 'V thinks'? Who's talking now?”

“ **Hard to tell. Terrence's been having an easier time controlling our body, but we're talking about things V knows more about, can't be sure whose words those are.** ”

“That's... not normal. Venom and Eddie keep distinct thoughts, they don't end up mistaking themselves for one another. That's freaky.”

“ **No, it's beautiful. We can see all the way into each other. Deeper bond than we can achieve with Eddie. Good thing we're not staying together too long, can't imagine being that way very long and staying human. Enjoying it while it lasts.** ”

“Venom, you sound stoned. Change back now, okay? You're like dissolving into your host, that can't be good.”

“ **Don't worry, individuality is entirely optional for our species, joining a hive mind doesn't actually harm us.** ”

Anne took the phone away from her face to yell:

“Dan! Come here! I think Venom is tripping balls!”

The baby's cries got louder as Dan walked in and took the phone:

“You know I can't help much, right?” his voice rang with disapproval. “I said I should run tests on you to figure out your healthy parameters, and you said, I quote: 'Since you're our friend, we'll let you choose which arm we'll bite off if you try to stuff us into a test tube.' You remember saying that? Now I don't know how your body works, so I have no way to tell if anything's wrong.”

“ **You're right, your suggestion was entirely reasonable, we apologise for reacting so aggressively.** ”

“Good God, you're right Anne, he is high!”

The lawyer took the phone back:

“Let me talk to your host now.”

“ **You already are.** ”

“Directly.”

Venom knew there was no arguing with Anne. Fine, they were going to change back before returning to the complex anyway, doing it a few minutes earlier was only extremely frustrating. The symbiote uncoiled itself from around Terrence's limbs, but for good measure, pushed deeper inside, into corners it didn't really need to occupy, but which added ever more depth to its perception of the human's inner universe. The stretching and folding of moving flesh, the whisper of thoughts in the electric storm of synapses, the metabolism magic that turned chemicals into life, the sea of interstitial fluid they bathed in, replenished with every beat of the heart. Did they really need to come out, when they had that?

Terrence felt their bliss, let out a raspy sigh, momentarily losing track of the outside world as well. He looked at the phone as if it was the first time he saw such a device, before shaking himself out of it:

“There you go. Happy?”

“Thank you.” Anne took a deep breath. “I don't think you can tell since you didn't know him before, but Venom's not sounding like himself. You have a strange effect on him, and I'm not sure that's safe.”

“Why should it be my fault? Maybe they're just a quiet, mellow guy normally and it's that Eddie that's a psycho!”

An unpleasant full-body twitch told him not to go further in that direction; Terrence's chemistry may be an irresistible lure to a symbiote's instincts, it wasn't he who had their love, and he should think twice before insulting the alien's husband.

“Okay I take that one back. But look, all the feedback I get from them say they're feeling good. I'd be the first to know if anything was wrong.”

“You'd be feeling good if you'd just shot up heroin, that doesn't mean you'd be doing good.”

“I'm not drugs!”

“Maybe you are!”

“I can't believe I'm having that argument!”

“Look, he has a lot of qualities, but 'quiet' and 'mellow' are absolutely not among them. For now he's just high, but how long can it last before it turns into permanent damage? You could get damaged too, for all you know. Find someone else to carry him, pass him on.”

“For your information, they disagree with that idea.”

“You can force him out. Sound between 4000 to 6000 Hertz will knock him right out, you get a few seconds to...”

Terrence made a disgusted face as he hung up.

“You call that a friend?”

 

The astronaut walked back to the complex, punched his employee code into an emergency exit's electronic lock, and sneaked back to the dormitory area. He hung out with his colleagues for some time, but they were not encouraged to stay up late given how busy tomorrow would be, so he went to the tiny room he had for himself, after a stop by the vending machines.

He made a mental note to reimburse the company somehow later: lacking the change for the amount of chocolate bars he craved, he just reached in with a nimble tentacle and “borrowed” a dozen. Why was it that easy to just grow and use tentacles? His brain didn't have any motor centers for them. He could only guess it was _their_ brain now, he could use the parts that came from the other just as easily as the ones he was born with.

A few hours ago, if he had been told he'd end up feeling like he'd never be just himself again, that his consciousness could become one with another's, he'd have been horrified. But now he knew better. He could live like this.

Terrence went to bed, sinking into a beatific contemplation of the strange new world the alien opened up to him, unable to tell when that state of mind turned into actual sleep. He'd wake up fully rested, but would he still be the same man?

 


	5. Little Sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two good news: the symbiote escapes Terrence's influence, and learns that the Avengers won and everyone has returned. Unfortunately, that means Eddie is in San Francisco while they're in low orbit on the ISS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the story splits from MCU canon. The only real difference is the time frame, I didn't expect Endgame to be set ... when it was. So this version has Thanos defeated about 48 hours after the Snap. Off-screen, because Venom was obviously not going to be directly involved.
> 
> Don't worry about the few Japanese sentences. You can google-translate them if you really want, but they don't actually contain plot-important information, it's either greetings or statements that are clarified in English too.  
> A language detail: in translations, Venom's name is rendered phonetically, which means one canon detail diverges between the original and translations. The name is a common noun in English only, while in other languages it's just a name. Since that fic is English, then it takes the "noun" route which is why when they introduce themselves to a Japanese-speaking host, their name ends up translated. It's not used much in that form though, the host gives them a nickname almost immediately.

It wasn't peaceful up here.

The station was buzzing with a hundred devices working in the background, pumping air around, filtering water, adjusting antennas and solar panels, running the automated part of experiments. Conversations anywhere in the station could be heard at any other point of it.

None of these sounds were very loud, but the silence of space provided no background noise to blend them in, every one of those made it to Terrence's consciousness. He'd get used to it in a while, he knew, but in the meantime this was an annoying place.

Another thing he couldn't wait to get used to was the smell. The air in the ISS was always stale. Carbon dioxide was removed and fresh oxygen was added constantly, but no filter could get rid of all the gases and particles of several human bodies, each of them breathing, sweating and digesting in an enclosed space for months at a time.

They had just unloaded the supplies. They had to remove part of them before takeoff, spare parts and analytical equipment mostly, to compensate for the extra passengers' weight, but everything important was there. Soon the shuttle – the Drake; count on something privately-built to have a dumb name – would be detached and returned to Earth to prepare for the next run, but as everything did in space, there was a right time for this, if they wanted it to land somewhere it could be retrieved from in one piece. So while there was always some work going on, for now it was possible to take breaks, socialise or rest.

Terrence was looking forward for some “alone” time, and it was finally acceptable to seek it out. He knew his way around the station already, so he headed for the Tranquility module, happily finding it empty, and pulled himself into the Cupola. That tiny section was the part of the station that looked the most like what science-fiction imagined space crafts like. A large, composite bay window, currently shuttered, and control panels, buttons and indicators everywhere. Its primary function was to observe space, remotely operate the Canadarm and coordinate outside maintenance, but it was also a good place to relax. He closed the hatch behind him and opened the shutters.

The sun was in view, that wasn't ideal, but if he turned his back to it, he had a good area of sky to look at, under the planet's outline. His other half enjoyed the sight as much as he did. He nudged it mentally:

“I want to see this through our eyes.”

Terrence was put off by the idea that the symbiote could have any romantic contact with a human, and so he didn't allow the pleasure he took from its touch to take that direction, but there were many ways to enjoy things. How tendrils came out of their hiding place, out of his own body, liquid and soft while they pushed ahead, firm and elastic once they found their aim, implacably strong once they caught a hold, and finally indistinguishable from his flesh while they wove through and around it, giving it their strength and resilience while claiming it as theirs, was an unique, precious experience he didn't want to sully with a parallel to a mundane human intercourse.

Their eyes opened to a subtly different panorama, a broader range of wavelengths that let them see more stars, more colourful diffraction patterns in the atmosphere rimming the Earth, a new texture to the sky's darkness. They had little time to take it all in, because moments later, pain came.

It was no ordinary pain, it seemed like their whole body was being ripped apart cell by cell. The subtle connexion strands reaching into Terrence's body were losing cohesion, breaking apart, leaving scattered symbiote matter that instinctively tried to pull itself together, forcing new paths open through him, hurting him on top of the suffering he felt through the bond.

Venom wanted to fight something back, instinctively reacting to the invisible attack, and a spark of awareness Terrence managed to cling to prevented them from ripping the module open. An alarm was chiming. A terrible, shrill sound designed to assault the senses in the first place, to be impossible to ignore, was giving birth to ravaging resonance waves inside them, ripping their cytoskeleton apart, leaving them formless, helpless, and injured. The alien was struggling to use what strength they still hung on to to tear their way out of the Cupola, while the host was trying to direct their panic towards a safer escape route. Their combined effort took them to the hatch, where they twisted the handle frantically, the bulkhead groaning worrisomely under the stress.

“Don't rip the whole hatch out, just force the latch, please!”

They somehow managed the self-control feat of only breaking the latch. The hatch burst out forcefully, pushed by air pressure, and slammed against the Tranquility module's wall. A brief rush of air roared at the same time Venom propelled themselves away from the horrible chime, slamming into an incoming astronaut almost without noticing. Of course, everyone had heard the alarm, someone coming to check it out was inevitable. The small woman was knocked back into the wall and started screaming, more from the fright than from the injury she received in the impact. They followed, not because they wanted to catch her, but because they were fleeing, too, unthinkingly adding to her terror.

Soon, the alarm stopped, but Venom was exhausted, and Terrence found himself alone, confused, and very sore. If he rated the previous minute as 10 on his personal pain scale, he'd never describe anything else as more than a 3, at most. Karen entered the module and, before even figuring out what had happened, caught the panicking astronaut to keep her from hitting her head again in her efforts to get away. The smaller woman looked around, her motion shaking droplets of blood off her hair and letting them float free. Whatever the terrifying creature she had just seen was, it was gone, now. Had she dreamed it? She relaxed slightly in her colleague's arms.

“What happened?” Karen asked accusingly. “Did you do anything weird?”

Terrence shook his head, honestly not understanding the incident.

“I don't know... I...” he reminded himself that he could be more open about the symbiote, Karen knew about it. “We wanted to look out the Cupola together, I closed the hatch, so we wouldn't scare anyone, but then... there was this alarm, and it hurt too much to think, and now I can barely feel them anymore, they're just... I think they're scared, but it's dim.”

“You closed the hatch and just... transformed in there?” she asked in disbelief. “Were you thinking at all? 'Yes, lets suddenly change size in a small sealed space, that certainly won't trigger an air pressure alarm!'”

She took a rather hurtful mocking voice to say the last sentence, but was angry enough not to feel bad about it. She almost calmed down, but saw the dent the hatch had left in the bulkhead while it slammed open. If Noriko had been hit by the panel directly, she'd have had much worse than a cut to the scalp. Venom's shenanigans had almost killed someone right there.

 

They were plunged in the dark again. Only the flimsiest connexion remained, and a chemistry driven away from its usual harmony by stress hormones. They felt a purely mechanical push as Terrence's heart beat at a fevered pace, they weren't even bonded firmly enough to enjoy its life-giving music. They retreated within the folds of his peritoneum, where there was the most room to assemble back into a single mass, waiting as disjointed droplets of their matter clumsily migrated back together.

It wasn't the first time a sonic shock had ripped them apart; at least this time their convulsions hadn't thrown them out of their host, they could borrow nutrients to heal themselves. Having to crawl around in the toxic atmosphere right after a sonic injury always made things so much worse. They felt the urge to begin pushing out tendrils immediately, to start reconnecting despite how badly they needed rest. That wasn't reasonable, why would they feel that way?

They focused on their recent memories. The last several hours were spent in a state humans would be familiar with, that blissful haze between sleep and wakefulness, wanting nothing else than stay this way or slip all the way into sleep. That nearly mindless state was, however, harmless to humans. Any disturbance would break the spell, they would grow thirsty, need to use the toilet, or simply have rested enough, and they would wake up.

That's not what was going to happen to them. The all too perfect host would not let them feel any physical need. They molded themselves so closely to his mind that he was able to experience the world for them, they placidly followed, enjoyed whatever he offered to enjoy, unable to want anything but more of the same. Without the accident with the alarm, they'd have spent an indefinite time in that sleep-like state, maybe their whole life, without even missing their individuality.

Now, now they were in pain, but they were awake. They began pulling back the tendrils that had resisted the sonic damage, horrified at how thoroughly they had allowed themselves to be dissolved. Instead of connecting, they reached into the intestine's lymphatic vessels, filing up on the fatty digestive product before it was processed to the liver. They didn't mean to hurt Terrence, it wasn't his fault his body was so intoxicating, but they needed to fill up quickly; that act of parasitism would allow them to leave faster. It's not a feeling Venom admitted to often, but they were scared.

 

Everyone was in the Tranquility module now, talking over each others. Someone had brought the first aid kit, and Karen was examining Noriko's head, her hands protected from blood contact by medical gloves, despite several drops having landed on her face already. Given fluids' behaviour in microgravity, they'd have to clean up the whole module later, actually. Andrew, Laurent and Xigeng were inspecting the damage to the Cupola's hatch. They closed the shutters, for safety, and discussed installing the windows' pressure shield just to be safe, given how right now, they couldn't close the hatch if a pane was damaged.

Karen was trying to tell Noriko exactly what she had seen actually was, but she had never heard about Venom, and it appeared that there was a lot to explain before anything made sense. Terrence sat nearby, holding himself to the wall contritely, the woman scolding him back into silence every time he thought it would help if he spoke up. He was as surprised as anyone else when a tendril escaped through his stomach and probed around the air. Karen shouted:

“Don't let him out now! Come on!”

He tried to grasp the symbiote, but it did its best liquid impression and flowed between his fingers, reforming outside his fist and continued stretching out of him. A tendril found the wall, and with a hold, it was able to pull itself out faster. Noriko screamed again, the three men exited the Cupola, and Terrence continued struggling helplessly to contain the being.

“They're not listening to me, I can't hold them!”

The symbiote turned out extremely agile in low gravity, moving much faster than any human who attempted to go after it. Andrew was the first to go after it and soon, without understanding why they even wanted to catch it, everyone was chasing after it. It pulled itself along walls, flung itself across open spaces, easily dodged its pursuers, and soon managed to hide in one of the station's many crevices. Noriko still trembled with fear, but was taken by the call of the unknown just like her companions, and looked into the gaps it could have wedged itself into.

It's Terrence who finally found it. Of course, he had the best insight into how they thought. The alien had poured themselves into a storage rack's tubular structure, sheltering themselves from view as much as from ambient oxygen's contact. The man slid a finger into an open tube, managing to touch the wet-feeling mass, but it immediately retreated further into the structure.

“I don't think we can get them out of there against their will,” he commented. “They'll need a host, but they're scared of me, I don't know what I did wrong.”

Karen's anger had abated, and now she was beginning to feel sorry for the man. He didn't look okay, the creature leaving him had hurt him, but he was trying not to show it. She turned towards the others:

“That's right. The alien is not a free-living organism, someone will have to take him. It's biology, he needs it to live.”

Laurent shook his head nervously:

“Wait, why are we responsible for an alien's life suddenly? Why is it even here?”

Terrence sighed. He did not have the energy for this. Once more, he started with Thanos, the Kree ship, and Venom's reckless plan. Only now, he was somehow bumped out of the plan, and it was everybody else's problem.

Xigeng was poking into the tube with a pen, trying to drag part of the symbiote out, but it could make itself as soft as it wanted, and the pen went through it as if it was water. Terrence pulled him away:

“You know if you make them mad they can just jump at you?”

“Are we supposed to let it stay there?”

“They won't stay there. It's like... it's like being in the pool, and a wasp scares you. You can wait under water, but if it doesn't go away, you'll have to come out to breathe anyway. Excepts what they breathe is you. That metaphor got away from me, but don't stay this close, you get it? You could be hurt.”

“So it's dangerous too?”

“Very, but they can control themselves. Unless they stay in there too long, I'd guess. You know what they teach about pool safety, how you must never jump after a drowning friend? Your friend doesn't want to kill you, but they can't help pulling you under if they're drowning. So we have to find a volunteer to take them before they're out of breath.”

The warning didn't do anything to deter curiosity. The intruder was now a puzzle in addition to a mystery, the crew was doing a very bad job at staying away.

Noriko took Xigeng's place and straight up prodded with her finger, proudly pulling a tendril along as she withdrew it.

“I caught it!”

The tarry substance didn't liquefy out of her grasp, but allowed her to pull it, letting her gather whole handfuls of it, before it started wrapping itself around her wrists and tentatively explore her skin.

“More like he caught you.” Karen said moodily; she was pretty sure the girl didn't understand what she was getting into.

The symbiote was pulled out of the tubes without resistance. It was surprisingly small, given how imposing it could get once properly bonded. It was hard to take a good guess at its exact size given how irregular the shapes it took were, but it looked like it'd easily fit into a family sized soda bottle. Giggling, Noriko tried to cradle it like a kitten, but it was too mobile and definitely not kitten shaped to stay in her arms. Longer tendrils formed now, inspecting her body more boldly, and when she tried to pull one away from a ticklish spot, the way it clung alarmed her. It didn't feel as if it was sticking to her skin, it felt deeply rooted in.

She looked more closely and saw that it was doing that in many, many spots, each tendril splitting into finer ones as they insinuated themselves under her skin without resistance. She didn't start screaming before realising that the mass between her arms was shrinking, as it flowed entirely into her. But once she got going, she worked it into a full panic, and Karen had to hold her against the hazards of flailing in microgravity again.

When she tired of screaming, she clung to her colleague, panting, her anxious state only made worse by the whole crew's stares.

“Just put up with it for a little while,” Karen reassured. “When he figures out how to talk to you, you can tell him to go away. I'll take him if nobody else will. You should have listened, you know. Terrence said the alien'd do this if you got close.”

Anger was showing through the fear in Noriko's voice now:

“He said it needed to be held! I trusted him!”

“What? He said to stay away, you trusted him and you did the opposite of what he said?”

“Yes!”

Well... there was no arguing with that.

 

Meanwhile, the unexpected passenger was finding its way around its new home. It found a minor injury, an offensive thing in a host, letting blood out and bacteria in, weakening the whole. The gash in the scalp was soon mended, and the spilled fluid reabsorbed. A hand probed, found the small amount of ooze busy digesting the wasted blood, jerked away. The screaming started again.

The host was not as scared as she sounded. Venom had known much worse, in that respect. She was very expressive, quick to react. The emotions were intense, but not lasting, not damaging. It was a familiar temperament, not entirely unlike their own. But while the fear wasn't dangerous in itself, it meant they weren't welcome yet, and an impulsive character might not grant them a lot of time to convince it. Fortunately, they were growing quite expert on the human body, and knew which parts to connect to first. For this one, they'd start with the amygdala. This one trusted her feelings, she might be reassured to know they had the same kind.

 

The young woman was beginning to calm down, when suddenly, her eyes widened, and she spun as if to catch a prankster sneaking behind her back. Aside from Karen, who wasn't the presence she felt, no one was there. She jerked to the other side.

“How...?”

Noriko looked around several times before accepting her eyes' evidence.

“I felt as though my little sister was standing right behind me.”

Terrence guessed that must be how Venom made themselves known to her, and grimaced.

“Now come on,” he assumed the symbiote would hear, “don't appear as a relative, that's in bad taste!”

She raised her hand in an appeasing motion:

“No, it's not like that.” She actually smiled a little, then. “She reminds me of my sister, but I don't think she's trying to pass for her.”

“She?”

She nodded.

“Definitely feels like a girl to me... doesn't sound like one though!”

She chuckled again. The alien didn't look like a person at all, but once it touched you, it absolutely felt like one. This was so strange! She treated the nosy crew with her introduction to the new friend to overhear:

“Hello! Who are you?”

...

“毒? What loving mother calls her child that?”

…

“Yes my name is a noun too, but it's a virtue, it's dignified!”

…

“ごめんなさい。こんにちは、毒”

Andrew objected, speaking everyone's opinion:

“Hey, you can't talk to the alien in Japanese, some of us are trying to eavesdrop!”

 

Noriko found no horror in her body's weird passenger anymore. They discussed, switching between her native language and the one she used the most these days, and used the computer to determine when and how to launch themselves at the Kree ship. It seemed to go by itself that Noriko would shoulder the mission Terrence was forced to drop. Hours would pass before orbital mechanics would reduce the ship and station's distance enough to possibly cross, and so they discussed, the station's other occupants never far behind. Astronauts had to live with little privacy in the first place, but when one carried an actual alien around, their every move was watched by a little procession of personal spies.

Answering her curious colleagues' questions, she insisted that Venom was a girl and spoke Japanese in a cute Hokkaido accent, albeit in a voice that did not sound girly at all. This went counter to previous hosts' experience. But she was the first naive host they had in a while, everyone else already had known about them long before actually meeting them, perhaps they had molded themselves, in part, to their expectations. With someone who had none, maybe they could be perceived in more individual ways.

Terrence gave them some space, he remembered acutely how fascinated he had been, he didn't expect her to feel very social right now, but eventually, he had to ask about the concern that was driving him mad:

“Would they be okay with telling me why they got scared of me all of a sudden? Was it because the alarm hurt them? I failed to keep them safe?”

She was silent while she listened to the answer.

“She knows the alarm wasn't your fault. She's happy it woke her up, even if it hurt. You were devouring her.”

“What? I did no such thing! How could I even?”

His voice sounded harder than he wanted, but he genuinely was shocked that the symbiote thought that. Everything felt so smooth between them, how could he have hurt them in any way?

“You couldn't know,” Noriko finally answered. “The match was perfect, she was dissolving into you willingly, it made her happy. Happy enough to choose you over life. Now she doesn't fear you; when she has a host she is safe from you. But when she is naked you can attract her again, and she's scared of that. You can't go to heaven without dying, Terrence, you are death to her.”

The man didn't know how to feel about it. Flattered, scared and guilty at once, sad that he'd never be able to share his world with anyone so absolutely again, relieved that the other didn't hate him, proud of being attractive enough to literally die for, ashamed of that pride. The lack of gravity allowed the tears to build up in his eyes without running down; he had to wipe them on his sleeve to clear his sight. He hesitated, then placed his hand over Noriko's and addressed the partner he lost:

“I'm just glad you're safe now. I wish we can stay friends, but I'll understand if you don't want that.”

She smiled at him with kindness.

“She says she's very strong, even strong enough to be your friend.”

He tried to respond, but his voice choked, and all he could do was nod and squeeze her hand briefly, before moving away into the Unity module to find a place to cry in private.

 

“あなたは私の妹のようです”

Noriko's raised voice startled Karen, who was hanging out nearby under the pretense of organising the new supplies' storage. She knew by now that Terrence's contact with the symbiote had been smoother than it usually went, but were they supposed to bicker literally all the time? When they deemed to argue in English, it seemed like they disagreed on the pettiest things, just like...

“I'm sorry,” Noriko said, having noticed her annoyance, “She's like my sister, I swear.”

Yes, sisters, that's exactly what she was thinking. They were suffering from a very bad case of siblings.

“I had it bad, sister wise,” she went on. “I'm a twin. But there was a mixup at the hospital, and nobody knows for sure which baby was born first. Can you imagine what it's like growing up with a little sister who's sure she's the big sister? Well 毒 is just as insufferable!”

Oh dear, that really was a terminal case of sisters!

“What were you even arguing about right now?”

“She's jealous of her husband's bacteria.”

“What?”

“The world would have been an even more horrifying place if the Snap hadn't taken people's gut bacteria along with them. Can you imagine, half a kilo of stinky microbes left everywhere a person was? Now she cries: 'Thanos's magic saw the bacteria as part of Eddie, but we were not close enough?' and I think this is very childish.”

“Alright. Venom, I'm on Big Sister's side on that, this is childish. And don't get back at the bacteria by eating them once you bring Eddie back, it'd make him sick.”

“Oh no! She wouldn't eat... _that_!”

“Eating inappropriate things is part of Venom's reputation. They eat people, sometimes.”

“うそですか???”

She covered her mouth as she gasped from the shocking memories her temporary _little sister_ accepted to share with her. Then her expression hardened again, and she tapped her finger into her palm authoritatively.

“外出”

It wasn't necessary to understand the order to know what she meant. She kept angrily pointing at her palm until the alien obeyed and partially emerged in her hand. The exposed tendrils began twisting together, but didn't have the time to shape themselves into the form they meant to appear as: Noriko's free hand swung and caught them in a resounding smack, flattening them back against her skin. She yelled at the now formless ooze and kept hitting it until it retreated within her skin's shelter. Then she took a deep breath, visibly calmed down, and made eye contact with Karen:

“She did the most scandalous things!”

She crossed her arms in a sulking attitude. Karen couldn't help but laugh:

“You know, you'll have to let him take over your body to jump to the ship. You can't launch yourself fast enough or precisely enough to catch it by yourself, that's alien expertise. So better agree on what he's allowed to use your body for now, before discovering he's into stuffing all kinds of inventive things into your mouth.”

 

Upon her request, the young woman was left relatively alone. She got into this situation by carelessness, and even though it seemed to be unfolding favourably, she realised she didn't understand it much. The memories she'd just been shared had gone through a human brain, they were a man's perception as much as the alien's. Even if she surrendered control of her body, she'd feel their actions as her own. If all they did together was jump at a space ship and break into it, that wouldn't be a problem. But what if there was some security guard in there? What if they had to kill not to be killed? She would see her own hands take a life, it would also be her doing. She was not convinced she could handle turning into a monster like the one she saw, either.

Letting an alien use her body to survive and possibly save the world, she was okay with that. It turned out they were a likable person, despite also being annoying. But she was discovering there were more conditions to it, and the three remaining hours might not be enough to deal with them. They had a lot of catching up to...

Noriko wouldn't have noticed the slight discomfort in her ears if Venom hadn't caused her whole body to stiffen in their sudden alertness. Air pressure in the station had just increased by a minuscule amount, and they remembered how nasty the sound was when the sensors caught on!

But no alarm came this time. The pressure increase was tiny, just enough to need to clear her ears. She looked around, not really expecting to find anything, and screamed. The symbiote wrapped itself around her torso protectively, but held themselves: they understood that eating the new intruder would be traumatic to their host, so it should not be their first option. They kept it open as a plan B, though. Noriko's screams resounded three times through the station before she finally got a hold of herself. She pointed a shaking finger:

“You! How are you here?”

Andrei stared at her wide-eyed. Alright, the woman was on the nervous side, but she just reacted as if she'd seen a ghost, that's a little much for being accidentally sneaked on even for her! He had, in fact, no memory at all of crumbling into ashes in front of his friends' horrified eyes. She touched him to make sure he was really in front of her, and he recoiled, seeing the black substance slowly oozing on to cover her arms.

“You're real! I can't believe it!”

He took offense at her continued suspicion:

“How can you act as if I was some strange phenomenon when you have this _thing_ on? I know what that is!”

She followed his gaze and noticed that the goo had wrapped most of her body.

“He won't hurt us, you don't need to protect me.”

The alien stopped progressing, but didn't pull back. Past its initial fright, it didn't feel so scared, but she understood that it liked to hug its host protectively, it only cost it a little energy to feel both safer and more useful. She allowed it to stay, then, and turned her attention back to Andrei.

“We saw you die! You and Anna and Francis! You were all dead!”

He grimaced in part fright, part disgust.

“You're delirious! No wonder, how long have you been taking the drug?”

“I don't take any drugs!”

“It's useless to deny, it's saturated your body, I can see it, that slime is its signature! The Americans call it 'venom', it kills people on the West coast. Makes you feel invincible, until you go insane and become a cannibal. I saw it in the news, you can't lie to me!”

“It's not a drug, it's alive! Oh forget it, I don't have time for that.”

She'd talk him straight later, for now, she needed to see if the other two had returned too. What if everybody had? Everybody on Earth? Maybe they did! Venom's plan left room to collaborate with the Avengers if possible, but it was entirely possible that the New York based team had found Thanos first, after all they were many, had powerful allies, and amazing assets, it would only make sense that they'd be more effective! Such an outcome would probably not be confirmed before a while, but its effect could be observed immediately.

The station not offering many corners to hide in, she was not long to find Anna, cornered by three overexcited astronauts who kept touching her and screaming on top of each other. She was as freaked out as Andrei, but given the noise that welcomed her, it was much more understandable.

“Give the poor thing some space!”

Unfortunately, nobody was listening. She couldn't exactly pull three resisting adults away forcefully, especially not in this weightless environment, where a careless kick against a wall could throw one head first onto the opposite wall and into concussion land.

“ **Yes we can.** ”

Oh, sure, there was that...

“What are you suggesting? Not something too scary, I hope?”

“ **No need, this is easy work. Hold on to this handle and watch.** ”

She grabbed the designated handlebar and held on tight. She couldn't exactly make out how many tentacles stretched from her torso, but several coiled around each yelling target, pulling them close rapidly, but not so much that the inevitable collision would injure anyone. She had to pick up from there, Noriko understood, or their intervention would only add to the chaos:

“Don't crowd her! Disappeared people don't know what happened, to her you're jumping on her for no reason at all, imagine how scary that looks!”

She refrained from mentioning that she had found that out by terrifying Andrei. Anna breathed deeply, relieved from the noise at least, then gave her a weird look.

“Why do you have tentacles?”

Noriko let out an embarrassed laugh while the tentacles retracted, releasing their catch.

“It's a long story. You were gone, many others too. Lots of crazy things happened in the meantime. With you, that makes two who just came back. I bet we'll find Francis wherever he was when people disappeared.”

She felt her companion growing increasingly jittery. The miracle was probably happening down on land too. In a dank alley in San Francisco, a man named Eddie was finding himself inexplicably alone, unaware of the catastrophe or its resolution. She had to fight the urge to rip a hole through the station and just jump at the planet.

“We need to call base,” her voice betrayed the struggle; “check if people down there are back too. _Little Sister_ is desperate to find her husband, I don't know how long I can keep her calm.”

Laurent agreed and hurried off. What Noriko perceived was beyond impatience, it took active effort not to do anything reckless that might result in killing the whole crew. Andrei came while she was clinging to the wall, breathing heavily and sweating, and it did not help with his idea that she was in the final stages of a brain twisting intoxication. He looked guilty, now.

“I thought I should kill you before you lost your mind and started rampaging.” He gestured at a knife he had taken the time to find. “But I don't think I can.”

That actually helped her keep the alien from doing anything stupid: as far as distractions went, a friend showing up with a knife and bemoaning that he couldn't kill you was potent! The module's other occupants stared: the situation was getting a little too insane by anybody's standards.

“You shouldn't watch zombie movies if you're gullible.”

She didn't feel the tentacle growing out from waist level that snatched the sheathed knife out of Andrei's hands, that was the Little Sister's initiative alone. He gaped, looking at her then at his empty hands. Noriko tried to keep her voice reassuring:

“I told you she was alive. You're a cosmonaut, you should be the first to be happy that aliens exist.”

She finally explained everything she knew to the newcomers, failing to completely reassure. As Karen had said earlier, aliens being real and someone being insane were in no way mutually exclusive, and lately, there was cause to suspect the alien itself was insane. The calm was broken when Laurent came back with good news:

“Base says people have come back on Earth too. Nobody knows why yet, and there's a huge mess to deal with, but they'll keep us updated.”

Noriko found herself unable to control her body.

“ **Airlock. Airlock now.** ”

Her own hands scrambled for holds and pulled her ahead. Around the first corner, tentacles stretched onwards and grabbed better holds, navigating faster and better in space than human limbs could, and she covered the distance to the airlock faster than she ever did before. Venom wrapped her entirely now, ready to shield her from the vacuum.

They obeyed her demand not to change her form though, and covered her like a skin-tight suit, occulting her actual clothes somehow in the process. It was their body for now, but they could show consideration, only showing their visage by forming their eyes in their usual shape, and tipping their fingers with claws. In every other way, they looked human. Still, she protested.

“We can't get out without a space suit!”

“ **Everything I can resist, I can protect you from. Vacuum, cold, radiations, landing from terminal velocity. No worry.** ”

“I'd rather not jump at all... but if we must, lets not go naked.”

The tentacles they used to travel detached from the walls, flattened themselves, and wrapped around their body, loosely imitating the flaps and straps of a spacesuit's accessories. It was purely cosmetic, but it did feel less naked.

The other astronauts caught up. Terrence had joined the group now, and couldn't help to call out:

“Hey! How comes she gets to look human, when we looked like something on the run from the SCP Foundation?”

The black-coated head turned his way.

“ **You never asked.** ”

The fact that this was an entirely fair point only made it more annoying. Then he noticed what Venom was actually doing.

“You... probably don't want to lock yourself in the airlock.”

“ **We're going out.** ”

“Okay first of all, the Drake will be flying down tomorrow, it's not that long. Second, we're above East Asia right now and that's probably not where you want to go. Third, are you really considering jumping from the ISS, like, for real? Noriko knows all that too, you listen to her before you drag her into something suicidally stupid, okay?”

He let them talk it out, being in a good place to know this was needed. He couldn't keep the others from bothering them, but he had something better to contribute.

 

“We're nine on the station, ten if we count you, it's designed for six at most.” Noriko was arguing, “So nobody will object us riding the Drake. We could even justify taking a Soyuz capsule, at worst. I'm an astronaut, I know about space travel.”

“ **I'm an alien, I know even more about space travel. There are faster ways to go.** ”

“I prefer the ways where we stay alive.”

“ **I won't let us die.** ”

“I'm sure you'll do your best. But what if that's not enough?”

“ **Eddie is down there.** ”

It turned out that taking over her body and moving it as their own was not the only way Venom could control her. The strength of the emotions that came with that sentence would have broken through anybody's willpower. They were probably not even trying to manipulate, the loneliness and worry they genuinely felt were simply that overwhelming.

“If you really know what you're doing, we can jump.”

They asked the others to help calculate when would be best. Aerodynamics would allow them to move many kilometers once they'd be in a thick enough atmosphere, but it wouldn't help much if they started off lined up with the middle of the ocean. It would still be an estimate, they couldn't predict how fast they'd be able to launch themselves, but it would be better than nothing.

Not long after, Terrence came back, holding a bundle. He offered it:

“If you jump by kicking at the station, you'll throw us off our course. You can use these as reaction mass instead.”

The present was a pile of books. Those were precious in space, paper being too heavy to be a first choice medium. Each of these books had been considered special enough to be part of an astronaut's stingingly weighted luggage. But now they were one of the few heavy things they could afford to lose, and the crew sacrificed that treasure to help them. Venom hugged Terrence, awakening a painful yearning in the former host, and promised they'd meet again. Then they sealed the airlock and started the pump.

 

The vacuum didn't cause them discomfort. They had to split carbon dioxide to keep Noriko's blood oxygenated and it was energy costly, but the trip wouldn't be long, they could afford it. Hard to believe, the distance between the station and the ground was only 250 kilometers, no matter how long you'd knew it, it didn't seem right that space was so close.

They pushed themselves gently away from the station, not to damage it, and allowed themselves to drift for a minute. Once at a safe distance, they wrapped two strong tentacles around half of the books, moved them far ahead, then pulled as hard as possible, throwing them back at cannonball speed. Physics worked as expected, and while the books were accelerated away from Earth – not quite reaching escape velocity, but some would settle into quite far away orbits – Venom moved towards it. Satisfied with the effect, they repeated the motion with the remaining books, doubling their own speed and angling north, to move closer to home. Gravity would accelerate them further, but it would be a while before that became noticeable.

It was a new experience, totally unlike a regular space walk. Noriko felt protected as well as by a space suit, but a suit wouldn't connect to her nerves. The alien allowed her to feel the vacuum's tug, the pinpricks of cosmic dust, and soon, the ever so thin breeze of the outer atmosphere's fringe. Their eyes worked fine on the surface, but that's not what they were made for, they were made for the unfiltered interplanetary light, for colours that didn't exist under air's cover. Noriko strained to retake control of their arms, only to wrap them around their chest, the only way she could hug the Little Sister, grateful for the unique experience.

They fell for several minutes before the hiss of the wind began taking an unpleasant pitch. They had been falling for quite a while before the air was dense enough to slow them at all, now that they were beginning to meet a resistance, they were going much faster than the speed of sound.

“How do we go about slowing past the sound barrier?”

“ **The what now?** ”

“You said you knew about these things! You came from space!”

“ **I said I'm an alien, I never said I was a pilot!** ”

“I trusted you!”

“ **And now don't you feel like a fool.** ”

“Damn you!”

She would never believe the symbiote didn't have older siblings. Only a little sister could possibly make fun of one for listening to their own bad advice! But fighting wouldn't get them anywhere.

“Alright. The sound barrier is when something moves through the air as fast as sound can move. That compresses sound waves in front of it, forming a high pressure wall. Compression also makes air pretty hot.”

“ **So you're saying, we're running into a wall of sound waves and heat. How much are we talking about?** ”

“You never heard about the damage a sonic blast can do? Fly a jet too low and you break every window in a whole town. You could flatten a house with those, if you could aim them. As to how hot they get, well they're why most meteors turn into ashes instead of hitting the ground.”

“ **Enough sound to flatten a house, and enough heat to burn rocks. Well it's not that bad.** ”

“You can handle that?”

“ **No, but we'll die quickly.** ”

Damn that alien idiot! She forced their fists to punch their sides. Of course, any pain she could inflict was hers as well, but it was for the principle of the thing. They were the most recklessly stupid person she'd ever met, but she could tell that they did not want to die, and that's one thing they agreed on.

“Could you do the reaction trick again? We could throw my shoes down really hard to push ourselves up a little.”

There was no way a pair of shoes would have enough mass to do the trick, but they'd try. They waited until they were in slightly thicker air; while the sonic shockwave was growing uncomfortably stronger, the increased resistance would help not just accelerate again. It was hard to figure out how they took the shoes from wherever they were hidden, but at the desired time, the pair was in their hands, and they threw them down with despair's strength. They did manage to get rid of some kinetic energy that way, and sound barrier's pressure cone widened as they were not pushing it forward quite as fast. Under them, the shoes ignited and vanished in a flash of fire.

“ **We'll need more mass to throw. You may feel a pinch.** ”

Noriko felt an unpleasant churning in her abdomen, and nothing she'd describe as a pinch at all. A ball of symbiote mass filled itself to the size of a softball.

“What did you put in there?”

“ **Waste.** ”

They almost lost the ball as she threw their hands back in disgust. They secured it with tendrils in time, then threw the dubiously constructed bomb down. It, too, combusted on the way. The pressure barrier was flatter yet, increasing air resistance in such a way that they would soon be braked below Mach 1, but also hit with violent sonic waves, and the tip of their feet were threatening to start burning. In a panic, Venom repeated the process, formed more projectiles, and hurriedly threw them until they were finally falling at a safe speed. Noriko was also relieved for this part of their descent to be over, but couldn't quite feel good about it:

“What... what else did you take from my body for these?”

“ **What would be easiest to replace. Water.** ”

“Should I feel thirsty? It looked like a lot.”

“ **We will need water as soon as we land, but you don't have to feel it. On an unrelated note, did you know that when humans are really dehydrated, they start bleeding into their brain? I didn't know that!** ”

“What?”

“ **I sacrificed a lot of my own mass too, I thought we'd shapeshift to glide to San Francisco, but that won't be possible, we'll have to walk.** ”

“Can we talk about what's going on with my brain?”

“ **I'm holding it together, okay? Lets take care not to separate, or we'll both die.** ”

She hoped the part about being able to take a landing from terminal velocity was true, because that's what was coming at at nearly 200 km/h. The ground was not so far anymore.

“Can we land in that snow?”

“ **No snow around here. But the desert does look shiny under some angles.** ”

“Desert.”

“ **Yes. The whole region's urban planning is an insult to geology, draining an already dry land to supply...** ”

“Shut up! We're almost dead from dehydration and you're about to land us in a desert?”

“ **... yes.** ”

“You unbelievable idiot.”

 

Disappointingly, the landing did not create a crater. A human body's terminal velocity was similar to a speeding car's. The crash raised a cloud of dust, but didn't break the surface.

The symbiote hurriedly silenced some nerves, attempting to heal the handful of broken bones before the host noticed. She, in fact, did, but diplomatically chose not to bring it up. They had enough cause to fight already. Venom got up as soon as it was feasible, and explored their surroundings. Yep. Desert.

Skinny shrubs showed that it did rain around here sometimes, but the blue sky promised it would not happen today. There was no point in digging for an aquifer, that land was drained to the bone to feed San Francisco and its surrounding farmland. But a distant growling sound promised even better than water. Venom followed it.

“If you ever come to Japan,” Noriko said to pass the time, “I'll introduce you to my sister. Of course she'll probably be mad that I think you're so much like her.”

“ **Why do you even think that?** ”

“You're an idiot, you're annoying, you're a baby even though you're an adult, I hate you, I might die because I jumped from outer space for you, and I'd do it again without hesitation.”

“ **Human families are strange.** ”

“Not really. Siblings can hate each other because they love each other enough to know all the fights will be forgiven. It takes trust to tell you you're an idiot.”

“ **No, not any less strange.** ”

The distant roar swelled and fell in long intervals. Noriko had briefly hoped it was the sea, but no, she had seen from high up that they were at quite a distance from it. What they did hear was the sound of car engines, passing on a not too far road. Few places in America were truly deserted. They'd find better than a spring: they'd find help.

The scarcely used road had few abandoned vehicle in the gutter, crashed much more spectacularly after the Snap than the city's slow moving cars, but in small enough numbers not to block the road. Hitch hiking would possibly be easier if they didn't have to appear as Venom, but releasing the host right now was impossible, they needed to work in tight symbiosis to keep dehydration from killing them both. To their surprise, the first vehicle that came stopped for them. It was a pick-up truck, its bed mostly empty save for a couple of dusty storage bins, securely strapped down. The driver was a middle-aged man in a stereotypically redneck outfit, but his friendly attitude went counter to the cliché. He squinted, inspecting them up and down.

“I don't know what's up with the suit, but you must be baking in there in that sun. Need a ride?”

They stepped towards him without giving him time to doubt his trusting attitude. Earlier, they had taken Allan's life, and that had given them the energy to save Edmond's. They could do it again, a few bites out of that helpful stranger would replenish Noriko's vitality, they would both be safe. One life to save two... That wasn't their original idea, but it did make them feel terribly hungry...

“ **Water.** ” They paused, then added: “ **Please.** ”

The driver nodded and moved towards the truck bed to reach the bins.

“Nobody takes that road without taking water along, if your car breaks down, waiting for the tow truck would feel really really long without water. It might be a little stale though.”

He took a six-pack of bottled water from one bin, and opened the other one, who turned out to contain his freshly bought groceries, on ice. That could be inconvenient: no city dweller took the highway to do groceries, he was probably not heading for San Francisco. He sat back behind the wheel with the bottles and a handful of snacks, unlocking the passenger door. Venom took the unspoken invitation and boarded the truck. Their hands brushed the man's as they greedily took the water bottles.

“Gee, your suit isn't made of fabric, what is it?”

He didn't get an immediate answer, the passenger downing a bottle first. He did notice they didn't lift their mask, the front instead splitting to briefly expose a red, toothy mouth. They didn't bother twisting the cap off the second bottle, instead biting through the top, just as they did with the third. When they paused to answer, their face resealing itself into an unthreatening mask, they noticed his stare.

“ **Don't worry. We probably won't eat you.** ”

The stranger smiled and started the car, checked the dead angle and resumed driving.

“I know, I brought snacks. My name's Jay, and you, are you who I think you are?”

“ **We are** **毒** ”

“You know, I assumed you were Venom, I know he can shapeshift, makes sense he'd look like a harmless chick to hitch-hike. But you're actually like the Japanese version? You do have a bit of an accent. I love it. Does every country get one of you or what? That would be so cool! You could meet up some times and have a tournament, it would be more awesome than the Olympics! I love the Olympics, but imagine that with aliens. Wow!”

The man was enthusiastically on board his own train of thought. They let him ride it and attacked the rest of the water. It wasn't as much as they had lost, but it pushed them back into viability. Jay gestured at the snacks:

“TLC ran a documentary on your... your brother, what? What's even your relation? You don't have to tell me if it's personal, mind. Anyway, they had security footage of a time where he just walked into a cake shop, bought a whole cake, and ate it all on the spot. I thought it was rude, airing tapes of someone being a completely proper customer. He paid and he didn't make a mess, what more do you want? If I patronised bakeries at all, I'd boycott that one! I don't know if your whole species has a sweet tooth but if any of those are to your liking take whatever you want.”

The man actually had disappointing tastes in snacks, half of the candy consisting of red licorice. But there was a box of M&M, and that was very much to their liking. Jay kept an eye on the road, but paid more attention to the passenger.

Venom's mysterious compatriot had a tidy appearance, looking at first glance like a small woman in a form-fitting suit, complete with a couple of seams and straps, and it took a second look to notice that the whole thing was wet and organic, the details shape-shifted in. Her head had bumps and dips in the right places to look like someone wearing a mask over a normal face, and it was almost convincing until you saw those wide glistening eyes squint in a way no mechanics could imitate. That gooey surface was flesh. And when the jaws parted to gobble up all the candy at once, there was no subtle slit letting that apparently sealed mouth open; the ooze simply allowed itself to rip open, stretching into strands that sunk back into the main mass after breaking up. With chocolate in the game, they forgot themselves and their “not a scary monster” approach, their whole face opened up into a grotesque maw to swallow up the handful of candy in a single gulp.

Jay enjoyed seeing that more than he should. Alright, the alien-ness of it excited him, but also, he was looking forward to telling this ride's story to everyone, and was glad he wasn't sitting next to an unscary, discount monster, but something that felt like the real deal.

 

Jay lend them his cellphone so they could call Anne. This time, they successfully remembered her number! They didn't want to out their “secret identity” by leaving Eddie's number in someone else's phone's memory. She answered after three rings.

“ **Anne this is Venom.** ”

“Venom! I thought you were in space!”

“ **We were. We jumped.** ”

“Jumped?”

“ **Jumped at the surface, yes. Gravity helped. Hard to miss, a planet.** ”

“God, you always have to go and do something insane! So I take it that you got the news about people being back. I know what you'll ask next: Eddie is okay. He called me crying when he woke up without you, I tried to tell him what happened but I don't think he believed me. He's with me, trying to catch up on the events, where are you?”

“ **We're on the 580, a nice man picked us up.** ”

“Wait, with all the stories about murderers pretending to hitch-hike to find victims, someone went and picked _you_ up that easily?”

“ **I have a host right here who'll swear I am a cute and vulnerable baby sister.** ”

“Sure, cute and vulnerable is the first thing I think about you. Speaking of perfectly normal people, do you want to talk to Eddie?”

They did talk for a while, but it felt off. The symbiote was a very physical being by nature, hearing Eddie's voice at least comforted them in that he was safe, but only made being unable to touch him more frustrating. They agreed to meet at Anne's; it was easier to find someone who's not moving. They gave the phone back and listened to the talkative driver, who was happy to have more silence to fill.

Jay didn't mind taking them as close to the city as the roads would allow. He stopped through a small town to buy more ice so his groceries would survive the longer trip, scolded them for eating the ice, took a selfie together for bragging rights, and drove on.

 

The truck couldn't even get close to the bridge. Removing all those cars and returning them to their owners would be a logistical nightmare everybody present was glad not to be in charge of. Many of them would be retrieved with a few extra dents, after Venom ran up the lanes leaping on top of them. The sidewalks were too crowded to move at the speed they wanted on them.

People who had vanished while driving had apparently reappeared standing on the nearest free spot of road, since their vehicle had moved on without them. The magic had made sure they didn't return to existence under another car's wheels or any equally perilous situation, but it didn't mean they weren't sometimes inconveniently far from home. A hasty rescue operation had chartered a couple of buses to pick people up from highway sides, which explained why their trip had been so uneventful, but to get inside the city proper, everyone had to walk.

It was Noriko's turn to experience the exhilaration near-unlimited power brought. Their run wasn't very efficient, jumping over obstacles they could have easily gone around, taking random steps on all four without any apparent benefit, sometimes even stumbling and doing a whole shoulder roll before landing back on their feet and running on. But none of this erratic nonsense slowed them. They were tireless, unstoppable. They didn't just move, they beat up, destroyed distance like one last enemy on their road. From the direction they were arriving from, Eddie couldn't have seen them out the window, but he certainly heard the commotion, and exited the front door a few seconds before they crashed at his feet, the neat form they took with Noriko contrasting with the weird contortions their limbs had to assume to keep up with a will that took human limitations as entirely optional. Eddie extended his hands to help them up, tearing up with joy.

They took his hands, allowed him to pull them at him. Another advantage to their current small size: they could allow their body to slam against his without knocking him over, it was nice to be able to just lean on him like this. They enjoyed his embrace for a moment before beginning to untangle themselves from their host. As they released Noriko, as soon as enough of their mass was released, they began to flow back to their true home. For a dizzying minute, they were rooted to two bodies at once, not an uninteresting sensation, but only one truly called them.

They remembered their way around, knew exactly where to stretch tendrils, where to branch, where to connect. The shape of organs they spent so much time molded around, yielding with each beat of the heart, with the slow contractions of the stomach, with each muscular twitch, never still. Filling every crevice in the dark cave of the chest, they found the light through Eddie's eyes, gently picking up their electrical messages in the brain itself, along with so many more. Only one thing could make them happier than having finally found their lover safe: finding him just has happy to see them return. He loved them.

 

Not everything was over, yet. Noriko turned out to struggle to stand on her own: she had just returned from weeks in space, that took a toll on a person. The symbiote had helped her body recover, but she needed to get used to gravity again, then take a flight home until her next job, if airports were functional. The Bay launch site would probably provide a room, but Eddie offered his couch if she happened to prefer a more civilian accommodation. She did.

The TV aired more updates on the situation. A declaration from a teleprompter-reading Nick Fury described the Avengers's part in its resolution. The superhero team's spokesperson was clearly not up to date either, Eddie surmised that he had gotten snapped too. Then came announcements from the government. Despite having been reversed, the Snap had left tremendous hurt and chaos in its wake, and getting society back in gear was a priority before starvation threatened. Strategic services and industries' workers were urged to return to work as soon as possible, the others encouraged to consult volunteering posts to see if their skills were needed anywhere.

Dan was already at work. The hospital was busy: car crashes were the most visible of the Snap's collateral damage, but there were a fair deal of injuries from children left unattended, meals left on the stove until they started fires, opportunistic crimes and despair-borne gestures. Many people had died, for real, but many more lived and needed help.

Anne didn't return to work for a while, instead joining, and soon managing, the local relief operations. Eddie worked under her direction, and she discretely tipped him up on any rescue that could use Venom's abilities. The online presence they hadn't suspected they had grew with a fresh batch of pictures, videos and comments from dozens of strangers. Honestly? They didn't hate that weird, gossip-driven fame.

Noriko couldn't be of much use, being too unsteady on her feet yet, so she stayed home or took short walks to watch America as it rebuilt itself before her eyes. She didn't know if she'd see her new American friends again, but she wasn't too sad to leave soon. She saw enough to tell that the Little Sister was in good hands; she'd probably always feel protective of the symbiote, just like she was of her actual sister, but just like she trusted her adult baby sister to take care of herself, she approved of the alien's worthy husband and seemingly fulfilling life. With the Internet, they could write as often as they wanted, she didn't need to watch over them.

Days passed, then weeks. With the roads cleared, the city could be supplied with produce and essentials again, industries were fed their raw materials, factories and stores reopened. Relief made place to business, normal city activity picked up its old purposes one after the other. Civilisation was mending the rip in its fabric.

And everywhere – at this thought, a black tendril emerged from Eddie's wrist and curled around to squeeze his hand – people were holding those they thought they had lost forever.

 


End file.
